


Trouble Town

by sleepyMoritz (Catherss)



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - British, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anglo-Irish Relations, British Politics, Canonical Character Death, Class Differences, Class Issues, Dissociation, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Growing Up, Irish Language, Mental Health Issues, Muslim Character, Original Character(s), Pre-Canon, Racism, Serious Injuries, Suicidal Thoughts, Teen Angst, Teen Years, The Troubles, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2019-11-06 14:50:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 36,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17941796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catherss/pseuds/sleepyMoritz
Summary: Jack Murdock dies, and Matt is flown from their home in Dublin to a convent in London. Years later, the universe - and his mental health - conspires for him to confront his history.





	1. All Roads Lead to London

**Author's Note:**

> So this fic leans a lot into real world events (specifically the 2011 London Riots, Brexit, and the Troubles). There's also Islamophobia, classism, anti-Irish sentiments in this fic, and it also handles topics of mental health and suicidality. If I got anything wrong, please let me know, and look after yourselves of course. 
> 
> I also use British & London slang - the latter particularly I may not have gotten right all the time, but if there's any slang that can't be figured out from context or a quick google search let me know and I'll define it for ya!
> 
> Big thank you to Pogopop and Tilthewheelsfalloff for beta reading.

 

A gunshot rang through Matt's dream, and like that, he knew _something_ was wrong--

It was too close to be a farmer, _too close to town--_

It was _in town._

He bolted out the door, sprinted down the cobbled street, onto the pavement. He was flying, feet barely touching the ground, trainers leaking rainwater as he ran to where he started to hear horrified voices muttering-- congregating-- the iron smell of blood--

An alleyway, a narrow one, running between two century-old buildings, now a post office and a cobbler. He stopped, panting as he reached it, then he turned sharply left and pushed between two men-- Gardaí, batons on their belts and rain softly pattering on the flat top on their caps.

“ _Ná déan sin!_ ”

“ _Lig dó_ , Christ, he's blind--”

“Daidí? Daidí!” Matt whimpered, his voice trembling. He fell to his knees, cane clattering, echoing, and wetness seeped in through his jeans. Someone was talking into a mobile phone. The Gardaí behind him leapt into action, hands under his arms as they dragged him away from the cooling corpse of his father and back out of the way.

 

 

* * *

 

 

What followed felt like car journey after car journey with adults who barely remembered to introduce themselves to Matt. He was put to bed in the Garda station on a settee in the Chief Superintendent's office. He didn't sleep, listening out to the men muttering and typing and drinking coffee and complaining about their wives and sniggering. Then in the morning he was taken to a house that wasn’t really a house populated by a bunch of disabled kids on the other side of the city. He haunted that place like a ghost for a week, then was taken to the the funeral, where the priest spoke to him quietly and Matt almost cried but he didn't because Daidí always said not to cry. And he was taken back. He still didn't sleep right.

The next day he was bundled into another car with Daidí’s heavy trunk. No one told him exactly where he was going - or maybe they did, and he hadn’t been listening - but he was taken to an airport and put on a plane. The social worker, a kind woman who didn't speak Irish (which was fine because Matt spoke English) left him at the terminal, giving him a tight hug that he didn't want. Then another woman picked him up at the gate and sat next to him on the plane and asked him to pick out a book, then read it to him. Later, when Matt would look back on that, he'd never remember what it was, exactly, that had been read to him, but he'd never forget that moment of kindness, the first he'd actually wanted.

“Where's Gatwick?” Matt asked, suddenly surfacing from the haze, kicking his legs against the seat in front until she put a hand on his knee to stop him.

“Oh, Matt,” she sighed. “It’s an airport outside of London. England. It was in your Dad's will that he wanted you to go to a specific convent, if he died. He even put money away for the flights.”

“Convent?”

“Where nuns live.”

He was left, again, delivered to a stranger with a posh English accent. He took Matt's hand at the airport and squeezed it lightly.

“I'm Father Lantom,” he said, voice soft and soothing, like one of those old men who did documentaries. He smelled strongly of incense and church, just like at home. It was comforting, a flicker of familiarity in all of the hellish newness. “Let's get you to your new home, now how does that sound?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“ _Ár n-Athair--_ ”

“ _Our Father_ ,” snapped Sister Elizabeth, her vice-like hand on his wrist.

He tugged his hand away, trying to stop his face from crumpling as he felt hot tears burn in his eyes. “Elizabeth,” Sister Margaret said quietly, as though Matt wasn't in the room. “Let him.”

“No one speaks _Irish_ in England. He has to learn sooner or later. Do you want him to be mistaken for one of those ghastly IRA extremists?”

“Sister, he's a _child--_ ”

“Those animals _car-bombed Ealing!_ ”

A tense silence. A heavy, hard sigh. Margaret nodded sharply, defeated but dignified, and waved her hand in his direction. “From the top, Matthew.”

“Our Father,” he spat, his fists clenching by his side, “Who art in heaven.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“He's getting worse,” one nun whispered to another. It was floors away, but Matt's ears burned, as did his skin, crawling and hurting and noises were like electric shocks to his head--

London was so _dense_ , people on top of people on top of people in tower blocks, sometimes so far up the heights were lost to his senses. It never slept. Tubes rumbled so far down in the earth they felt like they must be earthquakes, whilst construction work never halted, because at night they had the roads and tunnels to work on; people walked, cycled, and drove _everywhere_ , all the time, so constant he wondered if there was ever a moment where Londoners just _stopped_. Streetlights buzzed, pigeons fluttered overhead, foxes yipped and yowled at hissing cats that ripped mice into wet tatters. A shop nearby had a mosquito alarm to move loitering teenagers on, the only ones who could hear the high-pitched tone, and then the convent itself creaked and groaned and crackled, murmured and mumbled and prayed. If he concentrated and the wind was blowing right, he could thought he could hear some massive, churning electrical station, and the Thames barriers grinding, but maybe he was just imagining that.

It was never ending. The more he noticed, the less he could drown out.

He groaned and hummed and tried anyway.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The man threw a ball at Matt.

Matt’s hand flew up to catch it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Matt crawled up to the top of a church not far from the convent, across the moss-slick shingles, to the stone cross on the chancel roof. He liked it here since it was a little quieter, only the heartbeat of the priest who lived in the quarters and the occasional passerby to interrupt his solitude. It was surrounded on all sides by a full to the brim graveyard, and beyond that, roads that grew quiet in the witching hour. Though the city never slept, he loved it at this time, especially if there was no one else around. If he couldn’t have anything else, he could have London at night, all the backstreets and the corners and the dead-end roads. It belonged to him.

Matt shifted his focus down to the priest. Laboured, wet breathing - a cold, maybe. Something strange-smelling, but possibly edible. A food he didn’t know. A tick-tocking clock, a boiler humming, a whirring fan of some sort. There was another, rapid heartbeat in the room too. A mouse, by the scurrying claws. Matt liked mice; though he thought it was probably kinda childish to have a favourite animal at this age, something about how the little thing could be privy to just about anything as it sat in the walls and enjoyed invisibility felt like _him_. He certainly didn’t feel like a cat, anyway.

The rodent broke cover, and it rushed away from the blurring edges of Matt’s radar. He snapped his attention back to himself, and was reminded how far down the drop was from where he perched next to the cross. He never really forgot, though. It was always in the back of his mind whenever he snuck out to go climbing, which was most nights Stick wasn’t around. He was getting used to six hour sleeps, and Stick said he didn’t need any more than that, anyway.

The distance to the ground was enough to break a neck, for sure.

He stepped down onto the ledge just below. It was an inch, really, a misstep, between him and the stone path below. He couldn’t have even begun to imagine this kind of freedom before Stick, before Dadaí died, this kind of exhilaration. What he was doing would freeze up any other kids his age, and that was a part of the thrill, too.

He crouched down, carefully shuffled and then hopped to a gargoyle, his favourite perch of all the ones he’d found in Brixton, because it was flat where people looking up couldn’t see, which made it a pretty good place to practice meditation. This he did until he could feel dawn’s steadfast rise, his skin just ever so slightly damp with dew, the Victoria line rumbling as it roused.

Time to go home.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Matt offered Stick the bracelet. Stick left.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I'm _fairly_ sure this is illegal, Sister,” Matt said as he held out his hands.

A whistle through the air, then _CRACK!_ as the cane fell down on Matt's palms, a stinging pain erupting up his wrists. It was worse on his pride. He bit his lip to the point of breaking the skin rather than give her the satisfaction of breaking his silence. “Don't be cheeky, boy.” He was always _boy_. Truthfully, he wasn't sure some of them knew his name. “We are your guardians, and we will do to you as we please. You will not go out after dark. You will not.” Pause. “Say it.”

“Well, Sister, everything's pretty dark for me--”

Whistle, _CRACK!_

He clenched his jaw. He could disarm her - it was laughable to call the thin cane _arms_ , anyway, it was barely a twig - in seconds. But he didn't. Stick always said to lie low until the right moment to strike; so this was him. Lying low.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He never got his own back, when all was said and done. Matt _mellowed out_.

Well, he didn't. He just swallowed his anger til it was rock in his guts, and stopped arguing because he needed to stop getting into fights and anyway, fighting was fucking _exhausting_ \-- Jesus, was it a puberty thing to feel tired all the time, or--?

Matt’s school was a shitty Brixton comprehensive from that post-war construction frenzy, where buildings sprouted from the Blitz rubble simple, brutalist, and - as people had told Matt - ugly. It was made from a complex of buildings with rough walls and staircases so well worn there was a minute dip on the inner side where hundreds of thousands of students had walked. The sports hall was the largest single space of all and the most recently constructed, tacked on like an afterthought, but most curiously, it was built over something hollow. He managed to find a stairwell that lead down into a basement, then through the basement to a storage room.

In there was a ratty old punching bag on a hook.

No one really noticed if Matt just didn't get lunch, if he disappeared for an hour, so long as he was back in time for fourth period. He kept a spare t-shirt in his bag, put that on, carefully laying his school shirt, tie and blazer out of the way, off the ground, where they wouldn't get creased or dirty. His year was the first year group to have blazers. An effort to make the school look better, look less by-the-estates, less kids-with-free-lunches. Then, he'd just breathe, let the sound of the small room paint him a picture, the smell of it fill in the details.

When he hit the bag, it oozed the smell of dust and old clothes and stale sweat and it'd taken him a while to dedge up what, exactly, it reminded him of. Fogwell’s.

It made him cry when he realised, curled up on the ground and hugging his knees and hating himself for getting emotional. _Emotional_ was what got the shit kicked out of him; _emotional_ let people get worried, and God, there was nothing he hated more than pity.

He wiped the snot from his nose, clambered up, and beat the bag to shit.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Matt’s devouring of books had fallen by the wayside the past couple of years, mostly because his dad wasn’t there telling him to, and there were often more exciting things to do. Namely, exploring London, eavesdropping on drama, and masturbating, but at some point he realised that he’d been deceived. As his English Literature teacher quietly implied one of their Shakespeare texts to be full of innuendo, he wondered what else there was that’d been hidden to sink his teeth into. He got the feeling that there was actually a lot of exciting stuff in books, if only one knew where to look, and that wasn’t going to be at his school’s tiny library filled with inoffensive YA lit, or at the convent. Not that either of them had braille books to begin with.

Then, on the sly, he was opted out of whatever janky sex ed the convent intended on giving the kids, and though he’d been overhearing people get it on since he was nine, the staff at the convent obviously had no clue about that. In a leap of logic that made his stomach churn, they’d come to the conclusion that he _didn’t need to know._

It was time for a little petty revenge.

“I need any banned books you have,” Matt announced to the librarian at the desk. “Historically banned, currently banned, anything. The dirtier the better.”

“Uhm, well, that’s-- there’s quite a lot of banned literature,” he said, not unkindly. “What are you interested in?”

He paused. “I’m trying to piss off some nuns. Anything that will do that is ideal.”

“A fine undertaking indeed.” A grin leapt to Matt’s face. He _liked_ this guy. “Will you… ah, be needing large print or…?”

“Braille or audio books are fine. You’ve got audiobooks, right?”

“We have,” the librarian replied wryly. “We don’t have anything in braille format, I’m afraid. We can order it in from the RNIB, though. They have quite the collection.”

“Actually, I guess I’m looking for something that the nuns will see and understand. They can’t read braille,” he clarified. “Well, Sister Margaret can read Grade 1, but she’s not very good at it. Anyway--” He waved a hand dismissively. “Audiobooks are best.”

The librarian, who introduced himself as Bert, lead Matt to the small collection of audiobooks in a cozy corner, read out every title that might be of interest. Bert seemed to find Matt’s pursuit of filth amusing, and was more than happy to point him in the right direction, especially to texts that weren’t necessarily dirty but anti-religion. Once they picked out a handful he thought might do the job, they returned to the desk, and Bert cut up some pieces of card and gave them to Matt so he could pierce a braille sign into them with a pin, and then those were tied to the cases.

Matt carried them home feeling very pleased with himself, and they got exactly the reaction he’d been seeking; a realisation that he was just like all the disgusting, perverted teenagers in the convent, and he was finally pushed into a talk with a priest that was more mortifying for the priest than for him. Though it’d seemed from the outside like Matt had shot himself in the foot, or this was at the very least a pyrrhic victory, in his mind, he’d won the battle they didn’t even know they were having fair and square.

And, as a plus, he’d managed to do it without falling back on plan B, which had been to find someone who’d pierce a minor’s nipples. So he really _was_ the winner.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“We're sorry, Matt,“ Miss Thompson said, so sympathetic. “But we just don't have the resources--”

“You understand we're in special measures,” cut in Mr MacDonahue.

Matt nodded. He was actually kind of thankful; he didn't enjoy the prospect of the swimming pool, all the chlorine and the noises and the weird way sound was in water. Plus, all the general-- puberty feelings made him not especially keen on being half-naked in front of peers. It wasn't that he didn't want to learn to swim, it was more just that he had absolutely no interest in doing so. He'd need one-on-one support to learn (or so they thought) which was why-- well, they couldn't teach him. “So what will I do instead?”

“Well, you quite like English, don't you?” He nodded suspiciously. The audiobooks episode had kicked off quite the literary revolution for him, and he’d rediscovered that even if books were YA and not provocative, they could still be pretty damn good, especially non-fiction. Miss Thompson carried on. “You know we recently got an influx of Libyan students, and some of them aren't fluent in English just yet--”

“Fresh off the boat, so to speak.”

“Exactly, fresh off the boat. Well, coach. They're being given extra English lessons by Mr MacDonahue rather than do PE, but he was wondering if--”

“If you'd like to maybe help out. Just, y'know, answering questions, that kind of thing. It'd be a really good thing for your personal statement and CV,” he added, as though to sweeten the deal.

Well. It wasn't like he had any better offers. “Sure.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Matt was curled up bed, listening to the sounds of the city, the languages and the accents lapping and overlapping, levels for him to sift through. When before he had stumbled through the confusing mess of London’s sounds, now he just strolled, taking his time to listen in to the petty melodrama of the people who lived nearby. On a street corner, a teenager bought weed (it wasn’t weed - it was oregano) from a man who smelled of vinegar, and in the council flats opposite, two men talked about Blair’s failings over a chattering TV, and the conversation was beginning to turn to Thatcher, because it always did when those two got on about politics. One dorm’s occupants were awake, and they whispered to each other about school, while the nun on duty listened quietly to Classic FM and knitted.

Then, loud, out on the street, so close it almost felt like it was coming from inside the convent grounds:

“Fuckin' _Pakis!_ ”

Another voice. Male. Drunk, probably. “Go back to where you came from!”

“I'm British, you _dickheads!_ ” Female. Young. Heels, on the pavement.

“Fuck off back to Pakistan!”

“I'm not _from_ Pakistan--”

Two heavy pairs of feet trod up to the heels; Matt bolted upright, to the window--

Scuffling feet. “Ow, shit--” the woman yelped as she hit the ground. The heavy footsteps carried on, howling. The woman sniffed. “Drunk pricks,” she mumbled to herself.

Then she picked herself up, wobbly, and carried on walking.

Matt curled up in bed, furious with himself.

 

 

* * *

 

 

There were six new students who all arrived within a month of each other, the youngest being eleven, the oldest being sixteen. Matt was right in the middle of that at fourteen, so the eldest girl would sometimes coo at him and touch his cheek, which _shouldn't_ make him blush, because she thought he was a _child_ , but _argh_. It still made him flustered whenever she did it, which he knew damn well was probably why she did it.

The lessons that Matt sat in on were once a week, and he ended up being friends with two of them in particular - Aalia, the oldest girl who touched his cheek, and Haziq, who was in Matt's year. He helped them out in learning English, which they picked up rapidly, but Matt found himself picking up snippets of Arabic. Every time they asked him for a word, he'd ask what it was in their language in return. When Haziq and Aalia chatted, they'd switch between tongues to help keep Matt in the loop.

By the summer holiday, they were fluent in English, and Matt was-- well, passably competent in Arabic, just about, in basic conversations.

Over the break, Aalia and he met at the rec, a nearby playpark, mostly just because she’d offered and he figured he had nothing better to do. The rec was their go-to place to go during term, since Aalia's parents were funny about Matt being a guy and Matt couldn't exactly take a friend over to the convent. No less a _Muslim_ \- the nuns would have an aneurysm.

“What are you going to do for your GCSEs?” Matt asked as they sat on swings in the park. Aalia was technically two years above him, but because of her joining the British education system late, they'd decided to put her in a year below; as a result, she would be moving into Year 10, and Matt into Year 9 come September.

“I wish I could do my own language,” Aalia said, sounding like she was scowling. “I think I will do Art, though. _Baba sawf yaqtalini_ , but.”

“Fuck your dad,” Matt said. She laughed, whacking him on the arm lightly. “No, seriously, though. I think we could go to the head of year and ask if we could take an Arabic GCSE instead of Spanish. Who even speaks Spanish?”

“Spanish people?”

“Do I look like I'm about to move to Spain? Or South America, for that matter. No, it's better to do a language that-- y'know, people in England actually speak. Plus, the school’s population is barely half white. We can’t be the only ones who want to study it.”

“Matty,” Aalia breathed, kinda like she had a soft spot for him, which was cute. “You are not good enough at Arabic to pass an exam in it. Do Spanish. At least then you will have lessons.”

“Hey, hang on, not good enough?” he began, mock offended, biting down on a grin. “That sounds like a challenge.”

“No... Mat- _ty_ …” she groaned, knowing damn well what can of worms she had just opened. She always called him that - _Matty_ . He used to hate it from Stick because it was condescending - like, _c’mon, little Matty, you gonna beat me or what?_ \- but he didn't mind it at all from her, probably because of how much he fancied her.

“I reckon,“ Matt said, “that you and Haziq could teach me pretty well, if they won’t do lessons. Just stop speaking English to me. Maybe I can get classes at the Arab British Centre. There’s gotta be an orphan’s discount.”

Aalia sighed, frustrated but fond. “Why do you want to learn this so bad?”

The grin that perpetually found its way onto his face whenever he was around her faltered. “It’s as good a language as any,” he began. “I’m thinking of being a lawyer, actually. I’d hate to not be able to defend ten per cent of this city.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Get up,” Sister Margaret snapped, pushing into his room without so much as knocking - an unfortunate habit of all the nuns who looked after them and had resulted in pretty much every boy and half the girls being given lectures and Hail-Marys for wanking. Matt had only been spared such a mortifying fate because of his senses. “You’ll be late for school.”

“Don’t care,” Matt mumbled, head buried in the pillow.

“ _Up_.”

“I’m not a dog.”

She put her hands on her hips, all stern, like he could see it and have some sort of fear instilled in him because of it. “Get up, you lazy boy, or Sister Elizabeth will cane you again.”

Matt tilted his head out. “I don’t care.” He thought about making some sort of comment how Sister Margaret, _you_ can actually punish me, because she always referred his punishments to one of the other nuns. But that would be tempting fate, and although Matt was an idiot, he wasn’t stupid.

“Get. Up. _Now_.”

“No.”

“Do _want_ to be disciplined?”

“Do you _want_ me to call ChildLine?” An empty threat, mostly because Matt would probably rather kill himself than talk to a councillor, and he also wasn’t a grass, which Sister Margaret knew.

Margaret huffed, then inhaled sharply, like she was about to rebut with something else, and when she didn’t, the silence became halting, awkward, her hands fidgeting in front of her tunic. A gust of air as she let go of whatever it was, and she lowered herself to perch on the end of his bed, which _immediately_ set him on edge. Matt shuffled onto his elbow, his alarm being the sharpest thing he’d felt all morning as he blinked bleary eyes, and awaited whatever she was about to say. “Are you sick?” It was sharp - a formality, to get out of the way.

“No,” he said, bewildered. Even if he’d said yes, he’d probably still have to go in, unless he was literally dying of TB or whatever it was orphans died of.

“Then you need to get up and go to school. Do you think your teachers will be impressed if you can’t even be bothered to show up? God knows your peers could use a little firmer hand, but you should know better, Matthew.” A little quieter. “I know-- I know it's difficult. But this _attitude_ will get you nowhere in life.”

Going nowhere sounded pretty nice right now, and he doubted Maggie knew anything about this at all. Matt shrugged casually, flushing a little bit from the telling-off, even if he could pretend he didn’t care, which was the important thing here. Like-- he did care, but he _didn’t fucking care,_ and that was just another thing on the list to figure out when he didn’t have so much shit on his plate.

“What’s wrong, then?” she asked, resolving herself to being soft, which, God, was so much worse. She was _never_ soft.

Matt didn’t know what to say. He didn’t have anything to say to a fucking _nun_ , but the reality was that he didn’t have a lot to say to anyone who was still around. Even worse, he knew that if he _was_ given the opportunity to just-- fucking _talk,_ to anyone, oh my God, just _talk_ \-- he wouldn’t take it. He didn’t know _how_ to talk.

“Nothing,” Matt said quickly, of course he did. “Nothing’s wrong.”

His bed had him tied down, massive hooks in his head and chest, but he pressed on and up anyway even though the thought of it made tears prickle in his eyes from the sheer impossibility of the task. He managed it though, rocking onto bare feet as Sister Margaret examined him from his bed. Because there wasn’t anything wrong with him, and if he kept it up, someone might think that there was.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Matt tended to drift between groups in school, nomadically separate from everyone else. Growing up at the convent had afforded him a strange ability to exist in an in-between - he could meld himself to someone the teachers liked more, use longer words borrowed from his ecclesiastical background, and fit in with the small subsection of lower middle class kids. But he was also deeply embedded into the estate kid’s lives, got their slang and their thought processes, wielding their words at select moments to get a laugh or diffuse tension. He was a real chameleon; ‘a pleasure to teach’ and ‘sound’ at the same time. Generally, no one ever really seemed to care if Matt just dropped by their hanging-out place, ate lunch with them, then scarpered off.

He wasn’t entirely sure if that was how he liked it.

In any case, he most frequently floated to a small group of boys who, without fail, were _always_ in the form room for lunch - Haziq, Declan, and Tyler, who was pretty shockingly bad at literally all subjects except, for some reason, English, so they actually shared a class there.

“I dunno,” Tyler said around a mouthful of chocolate. “Just geddit, yanno? Essays is just makin' up some shit that's what the teachers wanna hear. And it's not hard to write fancy, like. And the teachers don't think I can, 'cause I'm chavvy.”

“They don't think you can because you talk like you got taught English by _Little Britain_ ,” Matt scoffed, ripping the shit lunch hall sandwich up because it was legitimately better than eating it.

“Yeah, so, chavvy,” Haziq said.

“And we can't all talk like posh twats,” Declan added, sniggering.

Matt turned to Declan, completely taken aback. “I sound posh?”

“Yeah, mate.”

“No, not posh, like-- you do sound a bit funny,” Tyler added, almost apologetically. “My dad didn't know where you was from when he met you at parent’s evening. Said you've got a mongrel accent.”

“Your dad is _so_ tight,” Haziq said, laughing. “Did he actually say that?”

“Yeah, man! But I said he was being tight and Matt was a good bloke, actually, so then he let off.”

“Bloke,” Matt repeated, wrinkling his nose.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Matt passed his Arabic GCSE with an A; he got a straight flush of A*s and As in all ten subjects, asides from in Maths, where he got a B. Of course it’d be _Maths_.

He’d gotten one of the highest results in his year group, which didn’t exactly do much for his ranking amongst the rougher boys, who’d taken to him as a bit of an amusing oddity - never mean, but not exactly taking him seriously, either, unless they wanted his help with homework. But it wasn’t like he had anything better to do than revise, and he could always find somewhere quiet enough to do it in the convent grounds. A lot of the kids lived in crowded flats, rarely having space to themselves when they needed it. Matt was incredibly lucky to have not only the dorms but the church basement and back rooms to hole away in if he wanted to.

About three weeks into 6th Form, Matt caught Tyler on his way out of the Head of Year’s office, shuffling and scuffing his feet as he admitted he was preparing to drop out.

“Just don't think school's for me, yanno? Not A Levels, anyway. And I fuckin’ hate the teachers. They all think I'm thick. Y'know what my English Lit teacher said to me the other day? She pointed me out and asked if I knew what ‘inconsequential’ meant. Like, Jesus H Christ, I can actually fuckin’ read.”

“But _you_ know you’re not an idiot. Stay, prove them wrong,” Matt insisted.

“It ain’t me who’s gotta sort their life out. I can’t be fucked.”

“So you’re just gonna leave and-- what, scrounge?”

“Oh, piss off,” Tyler said sharply. Matt hadn’t even realised he’d gotten riled up until then, so he took a half-step back, letting his shoulders slump. “Fuckin’ posh boy shit, bruv, like you don’t know how it is. I _ain’t_ a wasteman, and I’m gonna work, get an apprenticeship or somethin’, ‘cause I don’t wanna be on the dole.” Tyler snorted, and joked, “Shit money anyways, and I gotta pay for these kicks somehow.”

It wasn’t funny. Matt didn’t want it to end this way, not at all - Tyler was smart, whip-smart when he focused. For all his slang and posturing, he really was good at dissecting texts and extrapolating themes - it was something he could take further. “Just stay for a bit longer. You might like it eventually--”

“The government are gonna cut down the educational allowance,” Tyler cut in abruptly. Matt stilled. He carried on, sounding absolutely exhausted and-- sad. “And me mum’s being laid off. So I _gotta_ work.” He sighed, heavily, and Matt felt his familiar useless anger begin to churn away in his blood. “You’re a sound guy, we’ll keep in touch. Just send me a text, yeah?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Matt was one of the first in his form group to turn 18, but it wasn't until Declan's birthday in April that he finally went out for a drink, all of them and a few more, just because they could. Honestly, Matt wasn’t even 100% sure on why he’d been invited along, since he was friends in school with this lot, but not exactly friends _out_ of school, but it sure as hell beat sitting around in the convent, so he showed up anyway. He’d barely drunk at all - hadn’t had the opportunity, and he didn’t want to drink by himself because sometimes his Dad used to do that and it’d made him uncomfortable once he was at the age to really _get_ it.

It was so damn expensive they ended up relocating to Haziq's terrace house with a couple bottles of Smirnoff and Crofters split between them, since his parents were away, and, “Wouldn't care either way, so long as the TV didn't go missing. But don’t tell my dad we was drinking.” Then Declan sent round a group text, and before they knew it, it was a right little house party with friends of friends and people who Matt half-recognised from the year below.

It was all getting to be a lot. He didn’t recognise everyone’s voices or their smells, and he didn’t know how to talk to them, nor did he really want to. Declan was enthusiastically rapping along to Dizzee Rascal, and two guys were arguing loudly in the kitchen about football. Matt sat in a corner, feeling increasingly alienated, shrinking into his head, but then Aalia turned up with some Kopparbergs (thank _fuck_ , Crofters was _awful_ ), which was a total surprise. She gave one to Matt and they relocated to the narrow staircase, ostensibly because it was cooler there, but he wanted to catch up with her too. Full attention from another person was a rare thing, and, tipsy as he was, he let himself ask for it.

“Uni is so much fun, Matt. You don't realise how shite it is being at home 'til you move away,” Aalia said, sounding wistful. She was back home for reading week - she went to Brighton uni - so it wasn't too far, really, but they pretty much never talked. Matt didn’t have a computer he could use with any regularity, and his mobile was shit. He missed her, truthfully, but with her being a uni student and all, he doubted she really missed him back. “You should visit sometime.”

“I’ve never been out of London,” Matt mumbled. “Well, asides from-- where I grew up.”

“You never talk about where you grew up,” Aalia said.

“Not much to say, really,” he replied with a shrug, rolling the cider bottle between his hands, then shifting to pick at the label with cold fingers. “I don’t remember a lot of it, anyway.” He was pretty sure he remembered the important bits - what Jack was like, how their flat sounded in the quiet of the night, but not anything interesting for someone else to hear. Besides, those things were his, and he had a strange fear that to tell someone else would be to slice away a chunk of their significance.

Aalia’s fingers brushed over his forearms lightly. “I love your freckles.”

“I still have those?”

“Yeah,” she said, then reached up to ruffle the hair on his crown. “And you’re still ginger.”

He jerked away from her fingers as she giggled, glad for the change in topic. They sat at the top of the stairs for ages, finishing another couple drinks and chatting shit. Matt knew it was probably the alcohol, but he felt just so _confident_ all of a sudden, and then - because he could pretend it was the drink talking - he leaned into her. He said, so casually, though his heart was pounding: “You know I used to have a thing for you?”

Aalia’s heart went into overdrive in her chest. She leaned in and abruptly her mouth was pressed to his. He’d been kissed before - one of the girls at the convent - but not like _this_ , where it was pretty quickly apparent that it wasn’t innocent fooling around, and he didn’t really know what the hell he was doing, but--

Aalia made a noise, tiny, and his body flooded hotter; he pressed into it, then--

A door slammed below, jerking them apart, back to reality. A tense moment, a silence that said, _so what do we do now?_ Matt didn’t want it to end, but he couldn’t just _say_ that. Wanting was only any good if he was wanted back.

But Aalia grabbed his hand and took him into a spare room, even colder than the hall, pulled him to kiss her again. Her hands slid under his t-shirt, nails ghosting over his back, making him shudder and his hips cant forward at the unfamiliar sensation. She tugged at the hem of his shirt, and it took him a moment, but then he realised he was being an absolute mug. She wanted it off. She wanted to--

“But-- you-- aren't you--”

“Aren't _you_ Catholic?” Aalia asked, head resting on his shoulder, hair falling out of the soft material of her shyla, hand quite pointedly on his crotch.

He huffed a laugh, squirmed a little. Aalia giggled into his neck, and he loved it, he loved the sound of it, the warmth from her breath. Girls were _incredible._ “Alright. Touché.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Matt got an email from the London School of Economics and Political Sciences on the morning of Results Day, before he even rolled out of bed to go collect the envelope from his school:

_Congratulations! We're delighted to confirm your place at LSE starting this September, studying LLB Bachelor of Laws._

He tumbled out of bed, shoving the laptop he’d squirreled away to have by his side overnight - a luxury he’d only been afforded because he puppy-dog eyed Father Lantom - and jumped around he was so excited. His roommate, Joseph, mumbled, “Did you get in?”

“Yes!”

“Well done,” Joseph said around a yawn. “You're gettin' outta here, mate.” Then he promptly fell back asleep.

In the school hall, Matt made a beeline through laughing and crying and stress-sweating students. Some of them were calling universities, asking for a place regardless of their results; some were going through clearing, and others on the phone to their parents, ecstatic. Regardless of if they did well, a _lot_ of them were chattering excitedly about plans to get drunk that night. At the far end was Mr MacDonahue, who shuffled upright on Matt’s approach - he had Matt’s result envelope.

“Arabic: A,” Mr MacDonahue read. “Philosophy and Ethics: A*. History: A. Well _done_ , Matt.”

“Thank you, sir,“ Matt replied, breathless and elated and so, so relieved. “Holy shit. I did it.”

“You did,” he agreed, the grin so evident in his voice it made Matt want to cry a little. The fourth best university in the _country_. Matt was going to _university_. His Dad had dropped of school at fifteen with a megre handful of qualifications to fight, and if he couldn’t follow his father’s footsteps into the ring, he could damn _well_ follow them to the Old Bailey instead.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Next part out probably next week. Catch me on tumblr at sleepymoritz, and feel free to let me know what you thought with a comment.


	2. Panic on the Streets of London

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "Mental Health Issues" comes into full swing this chapter, so look after yourselves!

 

And then there was Foggy Nelson.

Matt was in a flat of five others, more expensive than what he’d initially intended, but then again, he got the full maintenance grant from the government, plus LSE gave money to poor kids and kids out of care, so really, he was going to be fine. He’d bought some new clothes and felt horribly guilty about it, but-- he was going to be fine.

“Matt, you’re going to be fine,” Foggy said through a mouthful of pizza they’d both ordered because it was Freshers week and everything was so cheap right now and Matt’d only ever had takeaway on his birthday, so this _really_ felt like decadence. The rest of their flatmates were out - where, they didn’t know - so it was just them, sitting on the floor in Foggy’s room, splitting a bunch of junk food between them over vodka cokes. They’d pretty quickly become inseparable, given they were the only two doing law in their flat, and the only two who just weren’t that big on clubbing. Plus, the rest of them seemed almost weirded out by Matt’s disability (or maybe just how he was, generally) and didn’t seem to know, exactly, how to act around him. “Just go into your overdraft.”

“I’m not going into my overdraft.”

“My sister says everyone goes into their overdraft at some point. That’s what student bank accounts are _for_.”

Matt just hummed, a bit tired, half a lukewarm slice in his hand and cooling rapidly. “I don’t want to,” he said, “and it’s harder for me to get a job.” He put the pizza back down in the box and stretched, yawning. “Man, I really can’t handle greasy food.”

“You, my friend, look like you don’t eat enough of it,” Foggy informed him, and Matt tried not to let his heart do a little trip at _my friend_ because, a) it was a _saying_ and Foggy was absolutely one of those endearingly weird guys who said _my friend_ like he was from the 40s and b) it was pathetic. “You’re skinny as hell, dude.”

“You sound like a grandma. You gonna tell me to eat more, next?”

“I’m considering it,” Foggy said easily. “In fact, I will: eat more of this pizza, please, because I’ve definitely had more than you.”

“I don’t eat that much, and I think my body is shutting down from all the cheese.” He pushed the box towards Foggy, who scoffed, but was reaching forward for a new slice regardless. All of this was really kinda novel for Matt; hanging out one-on-one in someone’s bedroom, sharing food, drinking. “Eat away.”

“Well, it _is_ Freshers - if there’s ever a time for overindulgence, it’s now.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

After what was probably the most tame Freshers week ever, his course _finally_ started.

Matt _loved_ university.

But not just his lectures or sitting in the quiet library or writing essays. He loved being able to eat when he wanted, being able to walk out late and have no one notice. No prayer to attend, no confession, no masses. His room had an en suite bathroom, so he should shower as long as he liked, hot as he liked, any time he liked. He’d bought a laptop, a pretty terrible old thing in comparison to his peer’s MacBooks, but he loved it dearly anyway. It was his first ever computer to himself, and the WiFi here didn’t block _anything_. There were definitely-- things. On the internet.

Anyway.

“A guy from my seminar group is having a flat party,” was how Matt was roped into the current situation he was in. Foggy liked to gently herded Matt to make friends with the people he met, which was normally very well intentioned and very nice but, right now--

He was super, super fucking drunk, bent over double in the park opposite the flats, throwing up. Foggy’s hand was rubbing circles on his back and when Matt’s insides finally stopped trying to evict, he rest his forehead against a tree and felt the chill of the evening seep in, a cold feeling through his skin that made him completely off-kilter. He was gonna feel _so_ embarrassed by this tomorrow, but right now, all he wanted was to curl up into a ball until the sickness passed.

“You done?”

Matt nodded, sniffing thickly.

“I have some water for you,” Foggy said. Matt lifted up his hand, and Foggy manipulated it into a grip on the glass, gently testing to see if he was actually holding it before letting go. “You got it?”

“Where did you get this from?” Matt mumbled into the glass.

“Inside, idiot,” was Foggy’s flippant response as Matt rinsed his mouth and drank as much as he could stand in one go. He felt his face do something. “Okay, fine. You’re not an idiot.” It was endearing, a bit like a parent indulging a child. Matt titled himself backwards off the tree and stumbled. “Oh-- alright. Hugging now.”

Were they? He pried his arms away, tried to keep himself upright. “No.”

“No, what?”

“Being drunk sucks,” Matt said, because to be honest, he wasn’t entirely sure what he meant either, so changing the subject seemed like a good course of action.

“I know,” Foggy consoled. “I think those last shots really took you out, dude.”

“ _Someone_ shoulda told me they were like that,” Matt said accusingly.

“I-- those were your first shots?”

“Well the last one wasn’t.” Then, after a moment’s consideration, he added, “Idiot.”

Foggy snorted. “Nice one, that was really scathing.” He pried the glass of water from Matt’s hands, which was good, because Matt’d completely forgotten he was holding it. “I didn’t realise you’d never done shots before. No wonder you don’t know your limits.”

“I don’t have limits.” Then that triggered something Stick’d said to him, which he repeated, for no good reason. “Everything you can’t do is a weakness your enemies will use against you.”

“Is that from _Game of Thrones_ or something?”

“God, Foggy,” Matt said, like it was hitting him for the first time, bright and horrifying. Was everyone like Foggy, or was Matt the weird one? “You’re so innocent.”

“Says the guy who didn’t know what bukakke was until three days ago.”

Matt would’ve said something great in response - something profound, about how sex had nothing to do with a loss of innocence when it was violence that so often brought pain-- Matt hadn’t been innocent to either since he was blinded, and he wasn’t innocent or pure or unscathed but right now-- right _now_ he was like Socrates or Plato or one of those other dead fucks who talked about what it meant to be alive-- because he _knew what it meant--_

He would’ve said something _great._ Instead, he canted away again as another wave of nausea upended his stomach out his throat.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Rosalind--”

“I’m just _saying_ , Franklin--

“Foggy.”

A pause. “Either way.” Foggy huffed, sounding like he was tucking his hair behind his ear. The woman who smelled of all things expensive trod steadily on high heels, one side of Foggy’s bedroom to the other. “You could find somewhere nicer than this to live. A bigger room, at least.”

“I’m not going into private halls.”

“I’ll pay for it, dear, no need to worry about that--”

“ _No_ ,” Foggy bit sharply. “I’m not moving out halfway through a term. I like it here. I like my flatmates.”

The conversation became an argument quickly, getting so painfully loud Matt was fairly sure that it wouldn’t take super senses to hear it. It was interrupted by a buzz from Rosalind’s phone. She sighed, gave her excuses, and let herself out.

Foggy leaned against his door and Matt heard his body tremble, like the precursor to tears. A wet sniff.

Matt was frozen at his desk, and he wasn’t entirely sure why. He’d overheard people cry at the convent - well, really, he never _stopped_ hearing people cry. Feeling fucked up or alone or overwhelmed was apparently not unique to the kids with no parents, and in a building with a couple hundred barely-adults Matt was privy to whole new flavours of angst. He had been desensitised to it before he even knew what _desensitised_ meant, but--

This was _Foggy_. Not two floors up, not in another flat, another world or another universe. Here. Just a few metres away. Matt could feel his heartbeat through the wall they shared.

Matt hauled himself up and through his door, knocked on Foggy’s. His breath hitched, and he swiped at his face, tears now on his hoodie sleeve. “Who is it?”

“Matt.”

“I-- uh.”

A long pause. Matt ghosted his knuckles against the door, his heart clenching. “I heard you were yelling-- I-- I wanted to check if you were okay,” he stuttered haltingly. He’d never really-- been that person. The one people went to when they were in distress. “If you want to talk--” That was something people said, right? “Well, I wouldn’t mind a break from revising.”

Foggy sniffed and unlocked his door. For a moment afterwards, nothing was said as they just took the other in. “Sorry,” he said eventually. “My room’s a bit of a mess. Clothes on the floor.”

“That’s okay.” Matt took a couple steps forward and shuffled his feet so the debris would be pushed out of the way rather than him tripping on it. He made it to the bed and carefully lowered himself down; their rooms were mirrors, their beds next to each other. Matt’d been a bit worried that he’d struggle to sleep without a roommate, but the flat layout made it very easy to tune in if he needed to. Which wasn’t often, and he was pretty sure some people would find it creepy, but it wasn’t like he was about to tell anyone about his abilities anyway. “So… who was that?”

“My bio-mum,” Foggy sighed.

“You’re adopted?”

“No. My dad is my real dad, but my mum is my stepmum.” Foggy plonked himself down on his desk chair, and launched into the story of his life. Rosalind had left his dad early on in Foggy’s infanthood, and although she claimed to essentially hate being a mother, she never quite managed to cut contact, instead swooping in every so often to pay for things, criticise his decisions, and swan out again. “She’s how I got to go to public school. I didn’t want to, but my parents said I’d be stupid to throw away the opportunity.”

“You never said you were public schooled,” Matt said, suddenly oddly uncomfortable. Foggy’d said that a lot of kids in his school were rich, but Matt hadn’t taken that to mean that he’d had his education paid for. Matt had a very real disdain even for grammar schools - though he’d moved to England in time to take it, he’d hadn’t been given the option of taking the eleven-plus, if one existed for visually impaired students. “Which school did you go to?”

“... Westminster.”

“You went to _Westminster?_ ” Matt parroted, aghast. “Jesus, how much were your fees?”

“Uh… I think about £13,000 a year,” Foggy said, embarrassed now. “I know, it’s horrific, right?”

“That’s four times our tuition fees.” Matt felt a little dizzy with it - who the hell had that kind of money to spend on a kid they didn’t even want to raise? And what the hell did a school need thirteen grand per student for? Double that would’ve probably would’ve paid the wages for _one_ of his teachers. “Holy _shit_.”

“Yeah, I know.” He slumped back on the desk chair and ran his hands through his hair. “Honestly, it made me feel so guilty that I was getting this money just to go to a fancy school and my siblings weren’t, and the imposter syndrome-- oh my God, you would not _believe_.”

“It was a good school, though, right?”

“It was excellent and I hated it,” Foggy admitted. “I wasn’t like any of those CEO-spawns, and they knew it, too. Y’know-- I know this is such a worst first-world problem, but it wasn’t exactly a fun time for me. I was bullied pretty badly.”

It did make sense, really - Foggy had said a couple things here and there that’d given Matt the impression his experience in school had been rough. Matt wondered if Foggy was as working class as he’d made out to be - especially given most people probably wouldn’t hesitate to say that Matt was clawing his way out of an underclass. “Why did they bully you?”

“Because-- I mean, I was a chubby, loud-mouthed poor kid. I wasn’t even _poor-_ poor and they thought I was basically _Slumdog Millionaire_.”

“They shouldn’t have done that,” Matt said firmly.

“I-- what?”

“They shouldn’t have bullied you.” He felt the skin of his cheeks go warm for saying it. “I-- you were given an incredible opportunity. And you took it. That’s-- good. So they were wrong for it.”

Foggy didn’t seem to quite know what to do with that, and Matt was immediately worried that he’d said the wrong thing; as it turned out, wanting to keep a friend sometimes meant being worried about losing them. Not that he had any doubt in his mind about being able to get on without Foggy - it was just that being alone wasn’t as tempting as it used to be. “Thanks,” Foggy said eventually. “I don’t think they should’ve, either.”

Matt nodded and flicked his tongue out over his bottom lip, then said, completely straight-faced, “But you’re still a class traitor.”

Foggy burst into laughter. “Oh, fuck you, dude.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Matt hadn’t meant anything by it in particular, but he jokingly called one of their professors _bent_ while they were cooking dinner around each other in the cramped kitchen, and Foggy went quiet, his knife falling silent from where he’d been chopping onions.

“Does it matter if he’s gay?”

“I-- uh,” Matt said dumbly, suddenly feeling cold and unsure. “Well, obviously not.”

“Then why did you joke about it?”

“He’s probably not even gay, Foggy. I was just joking.”

“Why is it funny?”

Matt squirmed. “It isn’t.”

“Good,” Foggy said, then turned and waved the knife in Matt’s direction. Both of their hearts were pounding a little, despite Foggy’s cool exterior. “Just so you know, I’m bi. I hope that won’t be a problem.”

“No, Foggy. God,” Matt rambled. He’d actually already sort of known - Foggy’s _handsome guy_ comment at the start of the year hadn’t been exactly subtle - which made him feel worse about making the joke in the first place. “I-- really, I didn’t mean anything by it. Sorry. I won’t… do that again.” Matt scratched his arm awkwardly, and felt like he should clarify, “I’m straight, though.”

Foggy threw his head back and laughed and that in and of itself was the sign that all was forgiven. “Yeah, Matt. I know _you’re_ straight.”

And that was that.

 

 

* * *

 

 

By the end of their first term, Foggy already knew Matt better than probably anyone in his entire life. It was so unlike all the comparatively shallow friendships he’d had before that it made him abruptly understand why some people called friends _like family_.

But of course, that meant that Foggy wanted him to actually meet his _real_ family.

“I don’t know,” Matt said carefully as he settled into the uncomfortable chair in the lecture theatre. “I don’t want to-- intrude.”

Foggy wedged in next to him, pulling out his notebook and the banana he’d clearly been intending to eat for a couple days now, given how long it’d been in his bag. “You wouldn’t be intruding, mate, we always have tonnes of people over at Christmas.”

Matt couldn’t exactly voice his real issue - that he wasn’t sure if he wanted to face up to what he’d missed out on - without making Foggy _really_ mother-hen him, but at the same time, staying over at uni during the holidays was pretty… well, sad. And _boring_. Foggy started to peel the banana, and Matt sensed an opportunity for a change of subject. “What are you eating?” Matt asked, tilting his head.

“Banana,” Foggy said as he sunk his teeth through it.

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why? Nutrients. Vitamins. Potassium. When was the last time you ate fruit?” Matt stayed quiet, because it was true he couldn’t remember. Foggy snorted. “Yeah, exactly. Think on the Christmas thing, pal. And if you even _think_ about being all British and polite about it, I’ll drag you over by your ears. Legitimate excuses only.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

As it turned out, Matt didn’t have any legitimate excuses, so Christmas at the Nelson’s it was.

Straddling the line between Brixton and the significantly more expensive Herne Hill, Foggy’s childhood home was a surprisingly spacious terraced building where the smell of blood and meat was entrenched into every square inch. The shop was actually more a deli than a butcher’s, even offering hot lunches with places for people to sit and eat, and was busy with customers from opening to closing, especially in the festive season.

“Granddad bought this in the 80s,” Foggy explained as he climbed the stairs up to the bedrooms. “Wasn’t even a shop back then, it was a right to buy council house, and the high street didn’t come down this far. But he renovated it, eventually bought out the upstairs so he owned the entire building, and passed it on to Mum and Dad. They actually want me to take the helm.” Foggy laughed, a little breathlessly. “Instead, I disappointed them by going to law school.”

Matt snorted. They reached the top of the landing. “Your granddad sounds rich.”

“Eh-- a bit, I guess,” Foggy said with a shrug, carrying on to a room on the left. “This is my bedroom.”

Privately, Matt thought it was completely delusional to think that someone who could _buy property_ wasn’t incredibly rich, but then again, Foggy went to school with people who’s daddies mysteriously did their taxes in Luxembourg. To someone like him, ‘rich’ would be relative. Plus, times were different back then, and South London was a whole lot trendier now than it had been at the time of Thatcher. “Looks nice.”

“Thanks,” Foggy said distractedly, then swore. “Oh, fuck! You’re such a prick, Murdock.”

Occasionally accidentally calling Matt _Murdock_ was a hilarious layover from public school, one that Matt endlessly made fun of. “Sorry, Nelson, old boy. Shan’t be doing that again, old bean.”

“Argh!” Fogy growled in mock-frustration and pointed at him. “I’m pointing at you, and it’s _very threatening_.”

“Ooh,” Matt deadpanned. “Not pointing.” Matt felt a sharp jab on his arm as Foggy poked him. “Ow! What was that for?”

“Wasn’t me. _[Devil finger](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uObqlYd5BwE)_.”

“D-- _what?_ ”

“Devil finger,” Foggy growled, as though that explained everything prodding him a handful of times again. At Matt’s confusion, he halted, finger still threateningly in mid-air. “Did you not watch CBBC as a kid?”

“Not… much?” It occurred to him Foggy might just be pulling his leg, which to be fair, was something they tended to do with one another pretty often. Matt had Foggy convinced for a good week that orphans didn’t technically have legal rights until the 1990s, because of a loophole law to do with workhouses and child labour that wasn’t ironed out until the introduction of the minimum wage. Once Foggy worked out it wasn’t true - in a lecture, of all places - Matt’d had to pack up his stuff and retreat to the flat, because he was disturbing the people around them when he broke into giggles every couple of minutes. “Is this real? Are you taking the piss?”

Foggy laughed, dropping his hand to his side. “Oh my God. It was a TV show I watched as a kid. Ask Theo about it, I’m not lying. I can’t believe you don’t know it - and I bet you haven’t watched _Father Ted_ and all.” At Matt’s shake of his head, he gasped excitedly. “It’s about Irish priests, you’ll love it!”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Christmas Eve always had a strange feeling for Matt - incredibly transient, fleeting in its importance compared to the big day, not that Christmas had ever been a particularly exciting affair at the convent, apart from the religious significance. He’d dragged himself over to the convent for mass, the first mass he’d been to since leaving for uni, and was met by a kid barrelling into him the moment he stepped into the knave, fingers still damp from the holy water at the door.

“Matt!” It was Lizzie, a tween girl who’d only moved to the convent the year before after being extracted from a negligent household. Matt’d been told to help her settle in, since that was usually the duty of the older kids. He’d done as much as he was supposed to, but-- he hadn’t really thought anyone would notice he’d left.

The breath knocked out of him, he breathed, “Hey, hi. Wasn’t expecting this greeting.”

Lizzie pulled back, shuffling her feet shyly. “I missed you.”

“Oh,” Matt said. _That_ hadn’t occurred to him. “Oh. Shit. Sorry, I should’ve come visited. And don’t tell the nuns I swore. Swearing is very bad and-- uncool.”

“‘Course,” she replied glibly.

“Actually, don’t do anything I’d do,” Matt stressed, suddenly alarmed at his apparent influence over the kid.

Before Lizzie could reply, Sister Margaret glided over, her footsteps barely echoing over the noise of the congregation. “Matthew. Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas,” Matt replied. “Room for a little one?”

Matt could only just sense it, and only because he was paying attention, but the corner of her mouth twitched into a smile. “Always.”

Sister Margaret lead the two of them over to a free pew, and even let Lizzie sidle in next to him rather than take her back to where the rest of the kids sat in neat rows. Then, the rituals of mass began, and Matt was struck by how comforting they were in their familiarity. The dizzying, heady smell of incense was making his head swim and the voices rebounding off every square inch of the space made him incredibly aware of the space, the box, the confines. Sometimes, everything would slide together for a moment, usually when the flock hit a key just right, and the moment would become so uncomfortably perfect it _hurt_. It’d make him weak; it’d make him strong.

It was all something he hadn’t realised he’d missed until thrown back into the middle of it. Lizzie lead him up to the front to receive communion, and after mass over, Sister Margaret sought him out and quietly asked him to help with the choir boy’s robes.

With the hunch he was being duped into going and talking with her privately, he said goodbye to Lizzie with a promise to visit soon and followed the Sister down into the church basement, carrying an armful of robes. She indicated where he should dump them and added her own stack to the pile.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” Sister Margaret said. Then, as an afterthought, “Start folding these, will you?” Matt nodded, smiling a little at it, but dutifully began folding the robes up the way she’d taught him way back when. He breathed in the smell of damp stone and ancient wood, being thrown into a visceral flashback of revising for his A Levels down here, surrounded by textbooks and bundled up with a heavy coat and fingerless gloves, sipping on coffee as he tried to distract himself from the stress of exams. The basement was always perpetually cool, no matter how hot outside.

Sister Margaret arrived back with a swish of her robe skirts. “I got a little something for you, for Christmas.”

Matt turned, a bit bewildered. “I-- you didn’t know I’d be coming.”

She didn’t acknowledge that, instead coming forward so she stood in front of him. “Don’t tell the other children I got you something specifically.”

“Okay.” Matt raised his hand, unsure of the size of the object. It wasn’t large; a thin, light box. Incense sticks, the heavy smell of them blooming through the parcel paper and the cardboard box they were wrapped in.

“It’s incense - frankincense, the same we use in church. I thought-- I thought, well, if you felt homesick, you could--” She cut herself off, a little awkwardly.

Matt was completely overwhelmed at the generosity. “Thank you, Sister. Wow, really. I didn’t-- I didn’t get you or the church anything.”

“Nonsense. Just visit, will you?”

Sister Margaret was trying to pass the request off casually, but Matt could hear her heart, pounding unusually hard in her chest. Matt, genuinely confused at her physiological reactions, agreed. What else could he do?

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I think we’re going to have to lay her off,” Anna whispered to Edward fretfully.

“Don’t look at that now,” Edward said back to her. “Christ, Anna, it's Christmas.”

“I know, I know, sorry.” A rustling of sheets as she clambered into a creaking bed. “I just can’t stop thinking about it, and unless the recession ends soon--”

“Anna,” Edward said gently.

“What would we say?”

“That there’s a recession on, and we can’t afford another staff member. We’ll just get Foggy to pick up more shifts.”

Matt knew Foggy wouldn’t be very happy about that, but of course, Foggy couldn’t hear the conversation happening two rooms over. He was changing into his PJs, chatting about the family gossip that’d surfaced over the course of the day for the couple hours Matt was out. Today was the day the Nelson clan visited for one massive present exchange and dinner, so the house had been full with kids and adults and babies. Foggy’s family was massive, and Matt was kind of in awe that Foggy could keep track of so many people when they all seemed to blur together so easily for him.

A lot his family had a very polite, very _British_ curiosity about Matt, asking him about where he grew up, and finding it very novel that it was in a convent-cum-care-home. One of Foggy’s aunts commented that it was like something out of a Dickens novel, and Foggy hissed her name and made a _cut it out_ gesture across his throat, which made Matt have to bite his lip so as not to laugh. To be fair on them, it was a very unusual setup, one even he hadn’t quite been able to puzzle out even by the time he’d left - the convent did get some money from the state, but relied too on community volunteers and contributions. Generally speaking, only kids with disabilities or major behavioural problems got placed at the convent, rather than being fostered.

Matt had to deflect questions often, steering the conversation into better grounds during dinner, or just stayed when possible quiet and letting the chatter go in one ear and out the other. Coffee and tea was served afterwards, to caffeinate those who had to make a long journey home, _Wallace & Gromit _on in the background to entertain the kids.

Now, though, Foggy had just face-planted on the bed with a long and happy groan. “I’m gonna marry this bed. I can’t _wait_ to sleep.”

“Same,” Matt said distractedly, digging around his his backpack to find Foggy’s present. When he found the envelope, he cleared his throat awkwardly. Foggy perked his head up. “This is for you.”

“Oh, shit, thank you,” Foggy said sincerely. “One sec, let me get yours.” Foggy leapt up to go search in his wardrobe.

“You didn’t have to--”

“I wanted to get you this,” he insisted, pulling out a rattling box. “Catch!”

“Foggy!” Matt shrieked.

Foggy burst into laughter. “Joking, I was joking. Okay, no, seriously, hold out your hands.” Matt did, and Foggy plucked the envelope out before he felt the weight of another hard box, sturdier and more square this time, about the volume of a bag of sugar but half the weight. “Aw, dude, did you write this?”

“Yeah,” Matt said, feeling a bit embarrassed. He’d kinda avoided getting Foggy a card, because he didn’t want to have to bother with the hassle of getting a shop assistant to help him out with one, so instead he’d just written his message on the front of the envelope. “Sorry if it’s, like, completely illegible.”

“No, it’s fine. Very legible. The most legible handwriting ever, even.” Though clearly a joke, it wasn’t mean at all. Now with their gifts in their hands, they didn’t seem to know what to do for a moment, before Foggy blurted, “Open them?”

“Open them,” Matt agreed. It wasn’t midnight yet, but-- be damned. He was ecstatic Foggy had even thought to get him something.

He sank cross-legged on the airbed he’d been camping out on the past week, and Foggy knelt on the floor as they tore open their presents. Matt was prepared to ask Foggy what his was, but then he realised there was a braille sticker label on one side. Before he could run his fingers over it properly, though, Foggy spoke.

“Matt,” Foggy said slowly as he clutched the tickets in his hands. “This is-- wow. Expensive.”

“I was tired of hearing you whine about wanting to see it,” Matt said, by way of explanation. “It wasn’t that much with a student discount. And one of those tickets is mine.”

Foggy laughed. “You don’t care about musicals.”

“Well, I’ll put myself through _Billy Elliot_ for you.”

Foggy stumbled forward on his knees and enveloped him in a warm hug. Matt laughed and, after a moment, shoved him away. “Get off, I gotta read this label.”

“Yes, yes, yes, do it!” Foggy said excitedly. Matt re-found the braille, and ran his fingers over it. _T-10 Talking Alarm Clock_.

“ _Thank_ you,” Matt said emphatically. “Oh my God, I’m so sick of the one I have at the moment--”

“You like it?”

“Of course I do, Foggy. I love it,” Matt assured him. Then, after a moment, put it down to one side and opened his arms for a hug. “C’mere, dickhead.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

That summer, Matt’s first out of care, he’d been found some short-term lodgings by LSE - his accommodation was apparently used for summer schools out-of-term - where he shared a six-person flat with one other guy who was barely around. Matt worked part-time during the holiday, covering someone on maternity leave and proof-reading braille information leaflets for the NHS. It was enough to coast on, especially since he’d barely spent any of his April student finance deposit, but not particularly exciting. Luckily, Foggy would drop by often, and they’d go for walks down to Southbank or the museums or the British Library, anywhere they could go for free, just enjoying the idle conversation sparked by the exhibits. Matt would sometimes get an Arabic audio guide - to brush up on the language - accompanied by Foggy’s descriptions.

Then, come August, they could move into their accommodation for the second year, which they shared with a few others from their course, friends that Foggy had found them given Matt still wasn’t doing great on the whole Know People Who Aren’t Foggy front. It was tiny and shit, as all student houses were, but Matt was still delighted by the idea of living in an actual _house_ , which Foggy had found endearing, and told him as much.

Second year kicked off. Foggy fell in love with Marci, an aspiring barrister with a sharp wit and brutal demeanour hailing from the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. For reasons that weren’t totally clear to Foggy but probably had something to do with Marci just not having the time for boys, they shortly thereafter broke up, so Matt did all the things friends were supposed to do when heartbreak was in the air - encouraged drunkenness, getting over it, and moving on. He stayed at the Nelson’s for Christmas again, since it’d been good last year, and Foggy’s parents bought him a really nice peacoat jacket, which he’d only briefly cried about in the bathroom after a few wines.

And then, come spring--

 

 

* * *

 

 

“A challenge,” Matt finished, his little prideful streak getting the best of him.

The woman smirked, her lips parting, pulling over her teeth, head cocking. The movement kicked another few particles of her perfume to him, the smell of her expensive shampoo shimmering off her hair, and it was dizzyingly good. “Maybe you’re not so dull,” she allowed.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“No, that’s--”  Matt heaved in a breath, feeling very much that his world was collapsing around him, that all the taut insanity of the past few months was, irreparably, coming unravelled. Shards of the anger that he had carried around in his gut since he was a teenager were digging into his chest, splinters rubbing up the wrong way in amongst the meat of his organs. “That’s all I’ve got.”

There was a good reason the ancient Greeks wrote about _eros_ as a type of divine insanity, and Matt was submerged in something that made his blood burn and his head spin. But Elektra’s disappointment was palpable and he could feel it on his tongue as much as the blood in the air. God, it _hurt_. He already wished he could turn back time, to when she was fucked-up-but-fun, and he was maybe just fucked up, and it didn’t matter one bit, because there was nothing more intoxicating than being desired by a woman of such incredible, cocksure, and expensive taste; her and her goddamn silk bed sheets twisted around his body like snakes.

The truth of it was that Matt had never wanted to be in a relationship just so he could find someone to make him feel special. What he wanted was the reassurance that he was normal, too. Elektra provided just a taste of both - enough to make him trip over himself and fall at her feet for another scrap - without ever letting him settle in to any kind of banal comfort.

But Elektra was too rich for Matt’s blood, and by the time he turned away from his 999 call, she was already gone.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Matt never missed a deadline when his third and final year of undergrad began. He never skived a lecture. He was fine, really. He was fine.

It was just that some nights, he really wanted to murder himself, which-- was fine.

Most nights, actually.

It was fine. He wasn’t out of his mind. If anything, he was suddenly back with it. There were lots of very good, very reasonable explanations for why it really would be better if he just wasn’t there, or if he could just sleep for a million years until all of this was over.

Often he’d forget to eat, sleep, or he’d have his first meal of the day at six, then collapse in bed at seven only to wake up fourteen hours later. Laundry and washing would pile up until the very last moment and past it as doubt wormed into his head; he questioned if he even deserved his place at LSE or the money he got to be there. He’d buy shit he didn’t need then spend the evening nursing his guilt, work out sporadically and well beyond exhaustion, assuring himself that spinning out of control was something he could have a handle on.

As the stinging wounds on his heart began to heal to dull heartache, Matt found himself hungry for that _moment--_ the one where the puzzle pieces of hormones, good mood, and attraction snapped perfectly into place, and all parties realised sex was on the cards. They wanted him, and they liked that _he_ wanted _them_.

However, it didn’t scratch any itches at all, and the nights he got laid made his heart ache bad enough to make him wish there was a way to get rid of it. Sex was great, but the end was nothing compared to the beginning, and the awkwardness in the aftermath was torturous compared to the ease he’d had with Elektra, lounging around naked, talking and laughing on her silk sheets. Still, he kept finding girls, flirting, fucking, leaving.

The term marched on. He aced every assignment, every exam, on track for a 1st Class degree despite his absences during the storm Elektra brought down on his life. So, when Foggy asked:

“Are you sure you’re okay, dude?” Foggy’s tone was light, but something in it was anxious, too.

What the hell could Matt reply? It wasn’t like he was about to drop out or something.

“I think this is just what university is like,” Matt joked. _Don’t bother, Foggy,_ was what he wanted to say. _I’m alright._

“Maybe.”

He didn’t sound convinced. Matt just shrugged, picked up his Pot Noodle from the counter, even though he really fucking _hated_ Pot Noodles, but it was easy and cheap and he shouldn’t be so goddamn picky. He didn’t have the energy to cook, and he’d need to clean his pan if he wanted to make proper food. He just couldn’t bring himself to. “I have to revise. Talk to you later.”

Foggy bit his lip and trembled on the knife’s edge of saying something-- God, anything-- but he didn’t, in the end. Instead, he put hand on Matt’s shoulder, then let it slide away after a squeeze. _I’m here when you need me._

Matt went back to his room, sat at his desk, left indents in his knuckles as he bit them to keep his crying quiet.

He swallowed it down. Wiped his cheeks. Resumed his lecture recording. Ate his food and tried not to think about it. Feeling shit about himself wasn’t going to get this essay written.

 

 

* * *

 

 

As the years before, he spent Christmas at the Nelson’s. Matt ended up in the kitchen, feeling drained and quiet after the Christmas Eve meal, helping Anna with the mountain of washing up. There was a special place in his heart for menial tasks, and he was glad to get away from the crowd.

“I’m sorry, Matt. Today must’ve been a lot for you,” she said after a moment’s silence, occupied with the sound of her emptying out the tub in the sink and refilling it with clean water. It was, in essence, the same apology she gave last year, but more sincere this time. Matt wondered if he looked tired.

“It was good,” he said. “No-- it was. I had a good time. The food was great.”

Anna huffed. “Oh, no, it was nothing.”

Matt smiled a little bit. He did love the Nelson penchant for being politely self-deprecating. Foggy could be just as guilty. “Well, I loved it,” he assured her, putting the plate he’d been drying on the stack he was making at the side.

Anna’s breathing changed. She wanted to say something. Matt stayed obediently silent - he wasn’t feeling much up to conversation, really, but he could hardly just stand in silence. “Foggy said you’ve been having a tough time, recently.”

Matt slowed, shrugged. He picked up the plate Anna had just put on the draining board and began towelling it. “I guess.”

“Well… I don’t know if you have anyone to talk to, chick, but if you don’t-- or if you just want to talk, generally, I’m happy to listen.”

Matt swallowed down the lump in his throat. “It, uh,” he began, thinking about a way to downplay, get her off his back. “I just got broken up with.”

“Oh, dear. What happened?”

Matt put the plate he was holding down on the stack, realising that he was so goddamn tired-- of it, of himself, of wallowing. His knee-jerk reaction of _no no no I cannot talk_ hadn’t helped him so far. “You won’t tell Foggy?” He didn’t know why that was urgent, or why it mattered, but it did.

“Of course not.”

Steady heartbeat - not lying. Matt steeled himself. “She wanted me to do something I didn’t want to do.” At Anna’s quiet gasp, he rushed to clarify, “Not-- not sexual, she didn’t-- um. Not that. But it was illegal. I-- I can’t say what. I refused, anyway, and that’s why she left.”

“No one who loves you should pressure you to doing things you don’t want to do. Especially not _criminal_ things.”

“I know,” Matt said quietly, though privately he thought it to be a massive oversimplification. “But it-- I can’t stop replaying it in my head-- if I should’ve realised sooner, or, if I’d handled it differently--”

“Matt,” Anna said firmly enough to make him stop in his tracks. “There is no use in what-ifs. I know breakups are painful - God knows I cried for months when my first love left me - but after a point, you have to let it go and start living fully again. There’s a reason John Lennon said that life is what happens when you’re making other plans.”

“... I don’t know if I can let it go,” he whispered, biting down on his lip to stop his face from collapsing into grief. “I just want-- her.”

“Oh, Matthew,” Anna breathed, wiping her hands on her apron then wrapping them around his shoulders, pulling him into a completely unexpected hug. The breath was knocked out his chest, and it felt like his feet had been swept out from under him. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Her hand came softly over the too-long hair at his nape, and for a century and a half-second, Matt was frozen with his aching heart as warmth bled through. But like the splintering of wood, his resolve begin to creak and crack. For the first time in a long time, Matt cried in front of someone else, in the tiny kitchen of Foggy’s childhood home, being held by a parent who was not his.

 

 

* * *

 

 

As much as Matt despised being told what to do by quote-unquote real adults, he had to admit that talking to one really _had_ helped put everything into perspective. Namely, that this too would pass, but in the meantime, he had to get his shit together.

He came back into the new term determined to sort everything out. He showed up to social events again, hauled his sorry, skinny arse back to the gym, bought healthy food and actually ate it. Like a functioning human being, he even got a haircut.

Everything was back on track. He still had the occasional murderous mood, but he took it upon himself seek out Foggy, even if he’d never actually tell Foggy the real reason why he’d suddenly demanded an impromptu hangout. Things got better. Not perfect, if such a thing existed. But better.

They graduated with first class honours, and in September, began their Legal Practice Course sponsored by Landman & Zach. Those nine months were a storm of caffeine-fuelled all-nighters, but they got through it, the stressful study sessions only bringing them closer (mostly in levels of insanity). Somewhere along the line, Matt realised he’d actually quite like to try living on his own, for a couple reasons. As much as he loved Foggy, living together for much longer was going to drive him bonkers, and he’d have to move out sooner or later and he’d rather do it before he was kicked out because Foggy got into a serious relationship, which he was clearly planning on doing soon as the opportunity presented itself. Though Foggy was initially resistant and more upset than Matt had anticipated, he relented, and come the end of their contract, he helped Matt find a tiny, shoebox flat. Foggy was due to move into his new flatshare come September, so in the meantime he moved back to his parent’s house, regularly visiting Matt.

But on a mild and cloudy day at the start of August during the holidays, only a few weeks before they were due to start their placement, a man was shot and killed by Tottenham police, about five miles away from Matt’s apartment.

“Jesus,” Matt breathed as Foggy pushed away his food to stare intently at his whirring laptop, perched on his thigh as he sat-cross legged on Matt’s bed. “They _shot_ him?”

“Yeah,” Foggy said, a little distracted, clicking and scrolling.

“Why the hell were they even armed?”

“I guess they thought he had a gun? I don’t know. Reports are only just coming in.”

Matt ran a hand through his hair and slumped back in his desk chair, deeply, _deeply_ unsettled.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Two days later, a peaceful protest lead by the family of the victim sparked into a riot after a fight between protesters and cops lead to two police cars being set on fire. By the next evening, it was beginning to kick off all over London; Islington, Wood Green, Lewisham, even Oxford Circus. Arson, looting, assaults on civilians and police. The English Spring, the press called it, as they grew uglier towards the rioters. It was making Matt’s skin itch as the country shifted uncomfortably, wondering what it all meant.

“They’re closing the Victoria line between Stockwell and Brixton,” Foggy said fretfully. “Civil unrest, they’re saying.”

“Brixton,” Matt mumbled. “I need to go.”

“And do-- what?” Matt ignored him, stood up, paced to his wardrobe to grab a jacket. “Matt, what the hell are you going to do?” After another moment without response, he carried on in a small voice. “Join the looters?”

Matt whipped around. “No, Jesus, Foggy, of course not. How could you even think that?” Foggy started radiating an embarrassed heat, and Matt’s heart dropped as the silence became damning. “Because of where I grew up?”

“No!” Too quick. Heartbeat spike. Matt’s stomach churned, and he busied himself with putting his jacket on, back to Foggy. “But, mate, be realistic - a blind guy? During a _riot?_ You’re going to get yourself killed. People have _already_ died or been hurt, and I--”

“I can’t just sit here.”

“Yes, you can,” Foggy said with such surprising force it took him aback. “You’re going to stay here and sit this out like the rest of us because this is scary and insane and the police are handling it.” He threw his hands up, exasperated. “I’m sorry, Matt, but there’s nothing that you can do.”

Matt swallowed, his head running a mile a minute. “You’re right,” he lied. Then, he turned on his heel to face Foggy. “You need to go.”

“What?”

“If they’re shutting down lines, how are you going to get home? You’re supposed to be opening up the shop tomorrow.”

“I can’t leave you here,” Foggy said, horrified.

“Your family will be worrying.”

“So let them!”

“Foggy-- London is crawling with police and the looters are only targeting high streets at the moment. They’re not going to break into a shitty flat in a street of entirely shitty flats.” Matt picked up Foggy’s backpack from the foot of the bed and thrust it at him. “Go. Take the Southeastern line to Herne Hill. I’ll be fine.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Two hours later, the sun had set, and Matt had left his cane at home.

It was a bit of a run back to his home borough - just over four miles - but he managed it fine, drenched in sweat, skin prickling and senses amped up on high alert. Once he reached Brixton Road, he ducked into an alleyway to catch his breath, then put his hood up and kept his chin down as he strode down the high street. On the ground, he could sense a scarf that’d been abandoned by one of the looters, so he picked it up, wrapped it around his eyes. Just in case. People were swarming all around, weaving between cars with smashed in-windshields, debris, and fires lit in dustbins, throwing bricks at shop windows and kicking in the glass. Worse, Matt realised, was that a lot of them were _kids_ , real kids, kids with cracking voices, scarves over their faces and stolen trainers on their light feet.

There weren’t any police, at all. No tell-tale radio chatter, no sirens for at least a mile or two. The night was running hot, smoke in the air and flickering flames, simmering anger finally snapping into wild, carefree lashing out. It was fear and pain and anger crushed together, perfect kindling. It was chaos. It was his city, alight.

He couldn’t _stand_ it.

Matt turned off the high street and began to jog to the convent, his first and primary concern, worried about people stealing from the attached church, which wasn’t especially uncommon. When he got there, he found it to be quiet asides from the handful of heartbeats he’d expect, kicked up in anxiety, but not pounding in fear. Good. As he made his way back, a fresh smell of smoke from the south-west descended heady and thick - another arson attack, presumably. He scaled up a wall to the rooftops, then traversed across them. At the top end of the street it was quieter, and Matt came across a gang of guys loitering around a shop window. Waiting, he realised from their mutterings, until it was quieter and they could have it to themselves. He knew this place. It was a locally-run electronics shop.

Before he could even really think about it, Matt’s mind began to sharpen down to a narrow point, carving out the unnecessary distractions to focus in, hesitations being cut out to give room for instinct.

One of them scooped up a brick, and Matt descended like hellfury.

He had to admit - he was rusty. Though he’d forgotten what a real, dirty, no-rules street fight was like, his body hadn’t, and it sang in utter joy as it shook off the dust on long-abandoned rotes. Every punch landed amongst a choruses _yes, yes, more,_ every kick making his heart soar. Fighting was like dancing, really, choreographed and combined on the moment, and Matt never felt so full of grace than when his knuckles were dripping with blood.

“Jesus Christ, bruv,” one of the looters said as he stumbled upright from a blow to the nose. “The fuck do you think you’re doing?”

The rest in his posse were down, groaning on the ground, and Matt reeled on him for having the _audacity_. “What am I doing?” he asked, dragging him up by the lapels of his gilet. “What am _I_ doing?”

“Like, is you a cop or something?”

Matt shoved him up against the wall. “What the hell do you think _you’re_ doing?” he demanded, the guy bucking under his arm. Matt doubled down on it, putting his full weight on his chest.

“Stealing - the fuck does it look like?”

In any other situation, Matt might’ve laughed. Ask stupid questions, get stupid answers. But obviously, now wasn’t the time, so he deepened his voice, leaned away from the rougher edges to his accent. “Your mum never tell you that it was bad to be a thief?”

“Fuck’s sake-- I’m never gonna be able to get any of this shit, ever,” the guy spat. “So why not jack it? Who gives a shit, anyway? Not the fucking pigs, not the fucking government. If they cared, they’d be here.”

“You’re not gonna get them to listen by senseless stealing. Have you not seen the news? They’re already saying that this is just-- materialistic--”

“Well maybe I am,” he snapped back hotly. “I might as _well_ be. The fuck else do I get?”

It was ugly and grasping and greedy, but Matt couldn’t condemn it. He got it. He _understood_ wanting to be able to own nice things beyond his means; he understood wanting to feel like he was more than what he was. If he hadn’t wanted that, he wouldn’t have been so enamoured by Elektra.

Still.

“You don’t get other people’s things, alright? It isn’t right to take from others just because your situation is bad. _Especially_ when these people are your neighbours. Have a little bloody solidarity _\--”_

“Solidarity?” The looter’s lip curled as his teeth bared in a grimacing scoff. “Yeah? That it, hard man? If that’s it, then you’re one of us,” he said, jerking his chin out towards the chaos on the street, “or you’re one of ‘em.”

Matt swallowed uncomfortably around that, but now wasn’t the time for introspection. He wasn’t going to be able to stop this guy from looting, short of knocking him out, and he wasn’t about to beat the shit out of someone for theft, but this was the community that donated to the convent, the people that made sure the funny blind kid got around town without bother, and furthermore, a place that didn't deserve to be destroyed, so soon after the recession had ended. He might not live here anymore, but he’d be damned before he let it burn because of some misplaced cannibalism. “Get outta here.”

“You’re not gonna call the feds?”

“This has been going down hours now, and they’re still not here,” Matt said. “But you are going to go home anyway, and so are your mates, cause if you don’t, I’ll find you. And trust me, it won’t be pretty. You hear?” The guy shrugged, macho and uncaring. Fine. Matt grabbed him by his jacket lapels and shoved him, hard, against the wall. “You hear me?”

“Whatever, man.” A little bit of a shake in his voice now. Getting warmer.

Matt grabbed him by the hair and smashed his head into the brick. He cried out in pain, the taste of blood on Matt’s tongue as the looter snivelled. His heart clenched around a thrilling shock of adrenaline. Voice pitched low, he snarled, “ _Now_ do you hear me?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah! Jesus Christ, bruv, the fuck’s wrong with you?”

Matt pushed him away, back to the high street. “Don’t stick around to find out.” The looter stumbled, righting himself, already going to sprint away.

Leaning against the wall, Matt let out a deep sigh, tracking the rabbit-heartbeat as the guy pushed his way through crowds. The sound of shattering glass snapped the moments rest, and the guys on the ground were beginning to pick themselves back up again. He had work to do.

 

 

* * *

 

 

By the time the clocktower chimed three AM and police vans were _finally_ rolling down the street to be met with bricks and bottles, Matt’s hands were drenched in blood, most of it not his own. He’d patrolled, protecting primarily the locally-run shops, the smallest thing he could do in all this chaotic mess. Sometimes he’d be greeted by the shop owners brandishing knives and airsoft guns and cricket bats, and others, it’d be him between the shop and a gang of guys. About two hours earlier someone had set a shop on fire, and it was still blazing badly, but there hadn’t been anyone in the building that he could sense.

He clambered up to the rooftops to get out of the way of the police as they spilled out of the vans, the slight but immediately recognisable rattle of guns on their belts. Matt sniffed, tilted his head to listen out more carefully. Rubber bullets. Thank God. The police began cordoning off areas to become sterile, and Matt felt that, finally, his work was done.

As his hands trembled and protested, he unstuck material from around them and chucked the bloody rags down into the open dustbin in the alley below, perching on top of the building he’d been guarding, straddling the peaked roof. He was shivering as his blood settled and a disgust began to make its home in his guts. Listening out, reporters began to arrive - TV ones, not the paper journalists who’d been drifting and reporting to their respective livestreams on the ground. People were beginning to scarper, mumble about making a move, or complaining about their way home being blocked by the pigs. Matt wasn’t sure how he was getting home, either.

He put the hot, raw skin of his knuckles to his chin, and wondered if he could lick away some of the blood. Probably a good way to get a disease. It’d be dawn soon and he’d be arrested if he wandered the street with hands like his.

Slipping down the building, he tucked his stinging hands into his pockets, even though it made him wince, then he walked as fast as he could down to the embankment of the Thames. The tide was low right now, early as it was, the water dirty with soot and grime. He crouched at the foot of the riverbed and rubbed off the worst of the scabbing, sticky blood, avoiding his wounds.

London hadn’t slept, and yet it was rousing, birds in the air and rats in the rubbish and Matt was, for the first time in a long time, incredibly awake.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“You disappear--”

“Oh my God, Foggy, it was twelve hours--”

“Twenty! And during a _riot!_ I was _terrified_ for you, man, you can’t just do that shit to me.” Matt was always surprised when Foggy admitted any kind of worry for him. A heavy sigh down the line. “But you are okay?”

“I’m fine. Nothing happened. Honestly, I just put my phone on silent while I did some meditating and didn’t turn it back on.” Matt put his phone on loudspeaker, and dipped his hands in his bathroom basin filled with warm, salty water, the only thing he had to clean out the wound whilst the shops were closed. It stung badly, but he contained his hiss and started to clean out the wound. It’d bled a little as he’d collapsed for the night after a shower, and it needed to be sanitised before he could change the bandages anyway. “How’s your ends?”

“Fine. Dad and my siblings camped out by the front door to make sure no one would try anything, but I guess the looters weren’t exactly looking to steal cuts of cold meat. And we’re not on the high street anyway, so.”

Matt hummed, rubbed his thumbs over the opposite knuckles. He was barely paying attention to the conversation. Just enough to stop Foggy from worrying. “Go dad and the siblings.”

“Yeah. I’d never thought Theo would have it in him. Are you going to visit Brixton?”

“I might check in with the convent. See if they weren’t robbed, or if there’s any cleanup I can help with. The nuns will be going full on _Wombles_.” Foggy laughed. London as a whole had a hangover today, but the worst of it was over here, as the unrest spread to other cities like a wildfire. The cleanup effort was going to begin as soon as police cordons were lifted, and Matt knew it’d so quickly look like nothing had ever transpired. London was like that - eternally ticking on, scarring over stronger than before. “I guess I’ll just have to see when public transport’s back up and running. We might not see each other for a couple days.” Thankfully. He knew he must look a mess.

“If you need to come stay up here, you can do, you know that? My parents would be happy to have you.”

“Maybe,” he said, lifting his hands out the water. He didn’t want to worry Anna. It dripped noisily until he brushed his palms against a towel, and began to dab-dry his raw wounds.

“What the hell are you doing right now? It sounds like you’re having a bath.”

“Maybe I am.”

“Your flat doesn’t _have_ a bath. Unless you’ve somehow managed to fit yourself in the sink.”

Matt chuckled. Hopefully it was convincing, because the weight of what he was going to have to hide was beginning to weigh on him. The Prime Minister had applauded the grassroots vigilantism during the riots for picking up the slack whilst police were dragged down from other counties, and though Matt hadn’t exactly been looking for validation from a Tory, it’d still vindicated his decision some. “I’m-- uh. I’m hand-washing some clothes.”

“Why?”

“Don’t think you want to know,” Matt said easily, hoping that Foggy would fill in the blanks however he wanted.

“Oh, _ew_. You need to get laid.”

Okay, not exactly what he’d been aiming for, but sure. “I don’t disagree,” Matt said, fishing around the fairly useless first aid kit stowed away in the kitchen for gauze. He’d felt blank the past few hours, like all his emotions had been used up the night before, but one thing was for certain: he didn’t regret it.

He didn’t regret it.

Matt lifted his head upwards slightly, feeling the hot gaze of his father on his shoulders. _It was for a good reason_ , Matt sighed. _Not because I wanted to._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this chapter ended up being a lot longer than I initially anticipated, lol. As always thanks to Pogopop and Tilthewheelsfalloff for their beta work! As always if there's any slang you couldn't pick up on from context let me know, but any and all comments are much appreciated.
> 
> Also, as well, the London Riots did happen, but I didn't want to use the name of the man who was killed for my fanfiction, which is why I don't say. But there's a lot about it online if you want to learn more, which I totally advise you do.


	3. Descent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, warning for Matt's bad mental health. Look after yourselves!

 

After bringing Karen Page back from jail, Matt suggested taking her back to the loft studio flat he’d just moved into, partially so he could keep an eye on her, but also because the offer would seem safer than if it came from Foggy, given most didn’t think to be worried about the blind guy.

Case in point: she slipped off her top in front of him, not even turning away. It irritated him - she didn’t know what sort of man he was, she didn’t even know to what degree he was blind, and considering she’d almost been killed earlier that day, he’d have thought she’d be a little more careful around strangers - but now wasn’t the time to be pointing out implicit ableism. He slipped his glasses off, encouraged her to think of him as vulnerable, not a grown man just short of six foot who was considerably fitter than the average Briton. Sighted people were often fascinated by his eyes, and Karen was clearly no exception, her breath sharp for a moment as her heartbeat sped up in response.

Matt didn’t always understand why people acted the way they did, but he was incredibly good at predicting reactions to him, wielding people’s biases against them. A story about how he’d like to see the sky again was something sighted people could relate to, could picture themselves wanting, something not so alien in an otherwise unfathomable way of life. And yeah, it wasn’t a total lie, but he’d been blind for coming up twenty years. He missed his Dad more than he missed being able to see.

Anyway, Karen lied. Couldn’t win them all.

As Matt heard Karen settle down into his bed in the partitioned-off bedroom, it occurred to him that if a woman had undressed in front of him when he was in uni, he probably would’ve made a move. Dogged as he was on the truth today, sex hadn’t even occurred to him, except for the slightly useless offence he took to her thinking him sexless; on a day as tumultuous as this one, he wouldn’t have wanted to do anything to make her feel unsafe anyway.

But-- still.

He settled back on the sofa and disregarded his hurt feelings to keep his mind on the puzzle.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“You don't carry a masked man bleeding to death into your apartment on faith,” Matt pointed out, pain flaring up and down his body. “You knew which side you were on the moment you found me. Why’d you help me, Claire?”

Claire spun him a story about the people she’d had to stitch up because of the Man in the Mask, all the broken bones and the sprains. Matt had been busy since the riots, and though he initially resisted the temptation to indulge in a little vigilantism, especially during his LPC, he’d thrown himself into it by this point. He was doing good. Stopping was going to get people hurt. It was basic logic, and it wasn’t like he had anything better to spend his time on. He hadn’t expected to get this far, and hadn’t really planned for it.

Then Claire helped him to torture a guy for information.

She was a keeper.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Karen joined the fray, slotting perfectly into the dynamic Matt and Foggy had been working on for six years. She could be incredibly shrewd, bossy, and persuasive, which was a killer combo for all involved (especially Foggy, whose crush on her made Matt smile when he sensed it - he could get behind the two of them). A Northumberland lass from a rural town she assured them they hadn’t heard of, she seemed to have visited just about every corner of the British Isles, and was more than adjusted to the hustle of the city by this point.

It took her a moment to get over his disability, but any illusions to Matt’s purity were unceremoniously shattered when Foggy alluded to him being not-so-celibate, calling him (lovingly, of course) a massive slag.

“You... uh, really?” Karen sounded surprised, a tad confused. The moment the narrative didn’t match the person was always one Matt took pleasure in.

But he just shrugged modestly, because to seem too pleased would obviously make him look like a dickhead. Foggy carried on for him, sounding weirdly-- almost sympathetic. Like, _oh dear, poor him._ “He had a slut phase... That lasted a good chunk of university.”

Then it occurred to Matt that, as he came dangerously close to being in his late twenties, sleeping around probably sounded less like he was a lads-lads-lads kinda guy enjoying singledom and a lot more like he was a person with massive attachment issues.

And-- yeah, okay. But it wasn’t that bad. Right?

He didn’t have much time to dwell at all, because in amongst it all were the Russians, Chinese, and the name “Fisk” being thrown around like it belonged to a beast rather than a man. London stirred uneasily, and Matt was working overtime trying to get to the bottom of it. No time for anything, nowadays; what mattered was keeping his city safe.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Then-- Claire. God, Claire.

Matt kissed her, felt her body flush as her tongue ghosted over his lips, tasted the food he’d made for her. It was so-- domestic, such a perfect little morning. She didn’t know much about him, but she’d seen his scars and him in a suit and decided it was something she could reconcile. Matt hadn’t done the whole one-night-stand thing since he’d started patrolling, given how often he was bruised and beat, and he didn’t even really want to do it with her, either, which was something of a revelation. Well, he wanted to _do it with her_ , but he wanted to know her, wanted what he’d only had before with Elektra.

Sometimes a kiss wasn’t just a kiss, and he wanted to hope. God, he wanted to hope.

Shortly thereafter, everything fell apart, because he’d had a couple years of things going relatively well, and he was well overdue a shitstorm.

 

 

* * *

 

 

His city was set alight, _again_ , but this time everyone thought _he_ did it.

Matt noted, with some irony, that he hadn’t even had to speak Irish for them to come to that conclusion. He vowed never to speak Arabic in the mask, unless he absolutely had to - God knows England didn’t need more fuel for _that_ fire.

He found Nobu at the docks and Matt--

Matt was out of his depth. Stick was right, and there was nothing worse than that. He fought and Nobu gutted him; Fisk and his henchman showed up and Matt was dizzy with pain, the blood in his ears oozing from his body--

Then-- an open window, the Thames underneath. Matt didn’t think twice. He leapt. Sometimes, wanting to do something that’d kill him wasn’t crazy, but actually perfectly reasonable in life-threatening circumstances. Because the thing was that Matt had never learnt how to swim; he couldn’t.

He couldn’t fucking swim.

His limbs were so weak against the current of the river, uncoordinated pawing that failed to keep him above the surface as he gasped from the shocking cold. Pure, unadulterated panic flooded him as he swallowed river water, dirty, coppery from his injuries.

 _Survive, survive, survive_ , begged his drumbeat heart.

Matt had to get to the shore - he was already struggling. His head was clouding over, and he could sense where the river’s edge was but--

It was a wall. It was a steep, steep wall, to prevent flooding.

He dragged himself over to it anyway, and as his knuckles brushed the concrete uselessly, the panic that’d gripped him slid away to an overwhelming sense of relief. Maybe it was over, and his first and last blood in defence of the best city in the world would make its way into London’s artery.

Yeah. This wasn’t a bad way to go out at all.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Matt woke on the shore, aching, alive, dizzy, because of the simple miracle of tides. As night gave way to morning, the water level in the Thames dropped, enough to expose the rocky, rubbish-filled shore where he’d been discarded.

Pain crashed down on him when he tried to move. His heart felt heavy, but he had to get moving, moving, moving. So he picked himself up, and, one foot in front of the other, he began to make his way home.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Foggy, Foggy, Foggy.

Claire too had been here, dropping off disgusting tasting antibiotics and bandages, but it was Foggy who was yelling at him, and Matt just wanted to sleep off the cold in his bones, wanted to explain it all, wanted to make Foggy _get it_ . He was so fucking innocent, sometimes, Foggy-- he didn’t always _get it_. Matt’s default was to keep his cards close to his chest, and even if it wasn’t, how the hell could he have explained-- this?

The door slammed behind him. Matt felt for the second time in his life his world unravelling - coming, irreparably, apart.

 

 

* * *

 

 

In the end, they managed it. Fisk was locked away in disgrace, and Matt collapsed in his bed the Devil of South London, and awoke aching and hungover and hungry, baptised by the press as Daredevil.

Things were-- okay. Good, actually. Nelson & Murdock Solicitors flourished - between Foggy’s ease with their richer clients and Matt’s fluency in English, Arabic, and multicultural London slang, they were starting to get a good mix of clientele. They made a name for themselves in Brixton. Money wasn’t great, and it wasn’t like they were going to be hiring a paralegal any time soon, but they had enough to pay all four rents with enough left over for drinks.

Speaking of.

“You have to tell Karen,” Foggy said as they sipped on beers in Matt’s apartment. It was a cold night, the heating in Matt’s building struggling to keep up, and Karen had politely declined the hangout. There was definitely something _up_ with her, and neither of them knew that it was, exactly. They were sprawled across his sofas, a queue of music in the background that was half of each of their tastes, so it swung wildly between genres. Matt didn’t mind. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

“No,” Matt said immediately, the knee-jerk reaction. No, no, no, he could not tell Karen.

“Why not?”

Matt considered. “Because,” he said, “I don’t want to.”

“Matt…” Foggy sighed.

He picked at the label on his beer, feeling irritatingly chastised. “It’s dangerous for her to have that information, and… I don’t know. It’s kinda a lot to just throw at a person, y’know?”

“What’s there not to get? You go around in fetish gear, beating up criminals--”

“Foggy,” Matt breathed through a laugh. “It’s not that simple.”

“She’s going to figure it out,” Foggy assured him. The room was weighted now, an oppressive truth that made Matt’s heart sink. Karen was far, far too shrewd to _not_ notice that he was coming in beat to shit on the regular; in fact, she had noticed, but not commented. Gathering evidence, probably, waiting till she had all the cards to strike, or the urgency to know what the hell was going on hit a critical mass. “You know she will.”

“Yeah,” Matt agreed softly. “I think she’s close.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

It wasn’t the bruises and injuries that gave him away in the end. It was his _Irish red hair_.

It wasn’t _that_ ginger - copper, really, was the way other people had phrased it. Most of the time, before Matt had a real mask and the cowl only covered his ears and not his nape, people would report him to have brown or even black hair, because when it was sweaty the colour darkened. In low light, it was apparently a very easy mistake to make, since sighted people seemed to make it all the time.

A photo surfaced where a slit of light was just, _just_ over his jaw, the rest of his face in shadow. Foggy assured him that it wouldn’t be enough for a positive identification, but--

“His stubble almost looks ginger,” Karen mused to Foggy, her heels kicked onto the floor at the end of a long day. Matt paused from what he was typing in his office.

Then Karen stopped, her whole body coming to the incredible stillness that only happened when she was consumed by a brilliant and urgent idea. Her breath stuttering, and body turning to Matt, he tried to school his face to keep its natural blankness.

Foggy laughed loudly, too loudly. It sounded almost hysterical. “Crazy, right?”

Matt rubbed a hand over his face and he just _knew_ that the jig was up.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Karen tested her hypothesis first. It was actually kinda fun watching her mind work.

First, she didn’t turn on the light when she came in in the morning, but pulled down the blind in Matt’s office, presumably testing to see if he actually _could_ work without light. It clearly puzzled her when he carried on as normal, but didn’t deter her investigation.

When it was just the two of them in the conference room, poring over case documents, she picked up a piece of paper, left for her desk to try and hide the sound of her balling it up. On her return, threw it just to the side of his left ear - which had actually been slightly worrying for a second, because she wasn’t _seriously_ going to throw something at her blind boss, right? No reaction. She’d have to try a little harder than that to catch him out - he had a lifetime of experience in pretending.

Karen tried a variety of different things when trying to elicit a reaction from Matt - a mosquito tone, a dog whistle, putting a chair in the middle of the room, strong perfume, swapping out sugar for salt in his tea, pointedly asking about his injuries and watching him squirm - but the actual breakthrough didn’t come for another week and a half. They were walking back from Josie’s, which was a bit of a long journey, but the tubes had stopped and Karen was a big believer in walking off hangovers before they even happened, a habit cultivated in her teens to avoid the taxi fare.

And then she almost got hit by a car at a zebra crossing, and what was Matt supposed to do? _Not_ stop her from being killed?

“I _knew_ it!” Karen said, turning on her heel, breathless and high-strung. “You _are_ Daredevil!”

“No,” Matt lied completely unconvincingly as the car sped away. “Can we get out of the middle of the road?”

“Tell us the truth--”

“I’m-- Karen, we’re going to get run over--”

“Look at me and tell me the truth.”

“I can’t, I am actually blind, I’m not lying about that--”

“So what _are_ you lying about?”

Matt froze, then startled when a car’s horn beeped. He grabbed her arm and pulled her onto the pavement. Karen was flushed, practically vibrating with excitement. “I’m-- do we have to do this here?”

“If we don’t do it here, we’ll never talk about it, because you’re an-- avoider--”

“I think that’s a bit of an unfair--”

“When were you gonna tell us, then?”

Matt dropped his head slightly as a guy bumped into them, and didn’t stop to apologise. He sucked in a breath. It seemed stupid now, childish, making a game of such a serious thing. “I-- I wanted to see if you could figure it out.”

“Well I did,” Karen said, only sounding a little bit smug, but also so sharp and demanding and she was his friend, truely, so he knew her in return.

“Did you run in front of that car to see if I’d help you?”

Karen ignored the question. “The implications of this, Matt, this is _massive--_ I mean, what if you get caught-- what about _Foggy_.” She inhaled sharply. “He knows, doesn’t he--?”

“He knows,” Matt replied tersely.

“He knows and he didn’t tell us?”

“I asked him not to.” Matt put a hand on her arm, brought his voice down a little. “Can we go find somewhere talk about this that isn’t right next to a Nando’s _?_ ”

“I don’t know, are you gonna actually talk to us? Or are you just gonna give us non-answers?”

Matt tipped his head back and took in a deep breath through his nose. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

Karen nodded, stuffed her hands in her jacket pockets. It was something of a miracle to get her to wear a coat, biting as the night was - she always said she was too Northern to bother, to which Foggy usually asked if she was too Northern to get hypothermia, too. _I swam in Lake Windermere on New Year's Day_ , she’d replied smugly. _Hypothermia had its chance._

She tucked her hair behind her ear, head twitching his way. “... Yes.”

“... What?”

“Yes. I did run out in front of the car to see if you’d help.”

“Oh my God, Karen!” Matt exclaimed.

“Well, it worked, didn’t it?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Matt tried his best to answer questions, he really did, and felt horribly bare for it. He’d realised that he much preferred to dole out select moments of personal truthfulness to multiple people at different times, so no one could see too much of him. Karen still didn’t know the entire picture - how could he explain a lifetime in one night? - but she knew enough to draw conclusions, leap to judgements.

She didn’t, though. Once Matt finished, she just leaned back on his sofa, running her thumb over her glass of whiskey, her eyes wet. “God,” she breathed. “You really have had a hell of a life.”

How the hell was he supposed to take that? “Maybe,” he offered. Then: “Sorry. It must be a lot to take on board.”

“I wanted to know. No. I’m glad you told me.” She drew her feet up, letting her knees fall to one side, then rested her glass on her thigh. “I guess you weren’t lying to us when you said that growing up in care was nothing like _Tracy Beaker_.”

“Definitely some false advertising going on there,” Matt replied wryly. Karen huffed, and it was such a welcome sound, small as it was. She wasn’t angry like Foggy - she was _curious_.

But the silence stretched on for another few long moments, where Matt got the distinct impression that she was staring at him. Salt was still in the air. Just as he became worried that she was about to cry, she said, abruptly: “I wonder why you got taken to _that_ convent, specifically.”

“It was in my Dad’s will.”

“But-- _why?_ ”

“Maybe he thought I’d do better in England, I don’t know.”

“You could request his will,” Karen suggested.

Matt rolled his shoulders up to his ears. “I mean, I’d like to know, but not enough to go through the whole process and spend the money on it. I don’t _need_ to know.” Maybe it was cowardly, but he also just… didn’t really _want_ to. Something about it was scary; it wasn’t unlikely that there would be some mention of his biological mother, and what if _she_ had a family, and then Matt had siblings? Aunts? Uncles? God forbid, _nieces and nephews?_ A family was a great fit on someone like Foggy, but not for someone like Matt. The only thing his blood was good for was oozing out of his scraped knuckles, not creating new obligations to strangers. Matt was a nomad, no doubt about it, and he wasn’t about to give that up - he didn’t need ties.

Of course, all of that was background. The real, visceral fear was that he’d find her, and she would hate him. Worse, she would be _indifferent._

“You and your money,” Karen said, shaking her head. “You know you’re a big-shot city solicitor now?”

“Am I? I don’t think my bank account knows that.”

Karen snorted, shook her head, and - perhaps sensing that this was rough territory for him - dropped it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

But in the way that life was, Matt didn’t get to choose when he was ready.

He was perched on top of Parliament at the tail end of a long night of patrolling. He was too restless to even try to sleep; from the sparse texts he’d exchanged with Foggy and Karen, they were also awake. News anchors were camped below, reeling off statements made by MPs and world leaders, reporting the final counts as they came in. As the announced results ticked up closer and closer to the 381 mark, Matt wondered, along with the rest of the country, what the hell was going to happen next.

Eventually, he got tired of listening to the quietly concerned voices, both sides assured that they’d simultaneously lost and won. He tilted his head and sniffed. It was June, and dawn was coming early and eager, the temperature rising minutely, steadfastly. Birds were in the air, cyclists on the ground, busses trucking along a normal route, and the Underground was rumbling, squealing, screeching. Motion, motion, motion. It was time to go home.

By the time he climbed through the widow of his flat, he already knew what the result was. Radios were chattering on every level, from every taxi cab and TVs mumbled through the walls. He stripped his mask off, and placed it on his coffee table. With slow and sluggish hands, he peeled off all of the Daredevil suit till he was down to his underwear, then plodded over to his room.

Phone. Matt scooped it up from his bedside table as he sat, hunched. He launched the BBC News app, and--

_**BRITAIN’S EXIT OF THE EUROPEAN UNION TO GO AHEAD AS 51.9% OF THE COUNTRY VOTES LEAVE** _

A terrible feeling sank his bones through the ground. He’d already known, but he’d had his blinkers on, stupidly hoping that this wasn’t actually what Britain would choose. He collapsed backwards onto his back, then twisted away from his mobile as he curled himself up loosely. Today was going to be a long day - the first in a very, very long year.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I need to get my passport sorted out,” Matt said as the girl at the till took his money.

“Why? Planning on emigrating before it’s too late?” Foggy quipped. Matt knew he was devastated by the vote too, mostly because of the amount of jokes he’d been cracking about it.

“No, but I’d like the option,” Matt replied dryly. “My dad--”

“Your croissant is just in front of you, sir,” mumbled the cashier, quietly shy to interrupt.

“Thanks,” Matt said, feeling it out and sliding it off the counter. “If either my dad or I was born in Ireland, either Northern Ireland or the Republic, I could get an Irish passport and keep the freedom of travel.”

To the cashier, Foggy said, “A flat white, please.”

“That’s £3.50, please.”

Foggy handed over the money and turned to Matt. “I thought you were from Dublin.”

“Well, my passport is a British one, but I don’t actually know where I was--”

“Um, your change.”

“Cheers, love.”

“-- but I don’t know where I was born. Yeah, we lived in Dublin before my dad died, and I don’t know why we moved there, or-- what's up with that entire thing.”

“Uh, so, stupid question, but Dublin’s in the Republic of Ireland, right?”

“Yes, it's in the Republic,” Matt said patiently, nudging the both of them out of the way of the queue. “So if I was born there--”

“You wouldn’t have a British passport, right. But-- doesn’t it say on your passport where you’re born?”

“... Does it?”

“Well, mine does.”

Matt waved a hand dismissively. “I don’t know where my old passport is - probably lost in the convent, somewhere. And I don’t need it to apply for a new one.”

Foggy nodded and sucked on his teeth thoughtfully. “Okay, well, what would you need to do to find out?”

“I had a look online. To apply for your first adult passport you need to give them your birth certificate, and one parent’s information - either their passport, which I don’t have, their passport number, which I can find out, or their birth certificates, which I can request.”

Foggy shifted on his feet and leaned in slightly, spoke softly. “You do realise though, in doing this, you’re probably gonna find out who your mother is?”

“I realise,” Matt said quietly. Foggy’s head turned his way for a moment - a look, probably, that Matt wished he could read - in a soft silence broken by a sigh.

“Would you try and find her?”

“I don’t know. Maybe,” Matt said. “I’m... I’m going to get a copy of dad’s will, too. And-- well, Karen brought up the question as to why I was brought to that specific convent, which… might be a good thing to know.” If he was going to find out part of his history, he might as well go all in.

“Did they not tell you?”

“They didn’t tell me much of anything, to be honest.”

“Flat white?”

“Mine, thank you.” Foggy took the drink and hustled them both out of the way.

“I’d like you to help me read the documents,” Matt said quickly. “If you-- if you would. It’s enough of a pain in the arse to get these documents normally, never mind a version for the visually impaired, and they might be handwritten so I can’t just scan them--”

“Of course, Matt,” Foggy cut in. “I’d be honoured to help.”

“Oh,” he muttered, running his thumb over the grooves in the handle of his cane. “Thank you, Foggy.”

“No problem, mate,” Foggy said, then took a sip of his coffee and grimaced slightly. “Why do I keep on getting coffee from Pret? It’s _awful_.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“You know, most people would just go to A&E.”

“Don’t wanna be a strain on the hospitals,” Matt replied as he fell through the window with a grunt. He groaned and twisted onto his back, pushing his mask off and lying there for a blessed moment of reprieve. Floors above, two women were passing a joint back and forth, arguing between giggling fits about which of two actors (neither of whom Matt had heard of) was actually the fittest. Often the overwhelming scraps of other people’s tragedy came so frequently and with such potency they’d meld with his own, but every so often, he’d occasionally get to be privy to other people’s joy; teenagers cackling so hard that came out was gasping giggles, the stress-response inducing admittances of love, nonsense conversations between good friends, ridiculously petty arguments through half-grins that lead nowhere except a new inside joke. Overhearing good things didn’t exactly make it worth it, except sometimes it did - or, just enough to bring him back down to earth.

“You know, you’re lucky to have me. Imagine if you were born in America - your healthcare bills would be astronomical.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Matt grumbled. “God save the NHS, and all that.”

“Alright,” Claire sighed wryly. “Up and at ‘em.”

Matt gathered himself up off the floor and deposited his body onto the sofa while Claire fetched her overstocked first aid kit. Things between them hadn’t quite been the same since everything went down, but they were both adults who could pretend perfectly fine that nothing had ever happened. Matt was just counting his blessings that they hadn’t slept together.

“What happened?” she asked as she scraped a kitchen chair over to where he lay.

Matt stripped off his overlayer of armour with another hiss of pain and pointed to the wound just under his armpit, over his ribs. “I got stabbed by a kirpan in my side, came in at just the right angle. I don’t know if it needs stitches or not.”

She paused for a moment in surprised confusion. “You mean those Sikh knives?”

“Yup.”

“Wow,” Claire said slowly as Matt lowered himself down onto the sofa and stripped off his shirt. “That... might actually be a first for me, and I’ve treated a lot of stab wounds.”

“They’re usually blunted,” Matt huffed. “It wasn’t even the Sikh guy who used it. It was his mate who go the bright idea.” He raised his arm out of the way and grimaced. “Sorry. Been sweating.”

“You always smell sweaty in the suit,” Claire said, amused, as she began to clean the wound. Matt barked a laugh. “I think this’ll need a couple of stitches, to be safe. Can’t have you scarring that body of yours more than you already have.”

The casual flirting was another facet of their relationship. They just couldn’t seem to help it; banter turned into flirting faster than Matt could say ‘bad idea’, but it was all just in good fun. Matt wasn’t particularly seeking a relationship right now anyway; sure, his traitor heart might catch a fancy, but between the firm and Daredevil, he just didn’t have the energy to dedicate to another person. “I’ll take it on board.” Claire smiled, and Matt wished abruptly that he could see the corners of her eyes crinkle, not just sense what her mouth was doing - he assumed they must. He knew he had crows feet when he smiled, since he’d felt them.

“It concerned me, actually. That the dagger was sharp.”

“Can’t be that unusual, can it?”

“They’re supposed to be,” Matt said, “but the Sikh kids in secondary school’s were always blunt, as far as I could tell. In the current climate...” He shrugged. “Ah, I don’t know. Just look after yourself.”

Claire‘s hands stopped, and she tilted her head up at him in surprise. “I never told you I wasn’t white. Please don’t tell me you can... I don’t know, smell race.”

Matt snorted. “Not usually. Well, I can smell diet, and obviously most ethnicities have their own cuisine, but that’s not clear-cut, and especially not in a place like London. No, it-- it was your hair, actually. The shaved side doesn’t lie flat. It’s curly. The longer side smells of chemicals.”

Claire hummed quietly, and he knew she wouldn’t take offence to that. All of the people in his life who knew about Daredevil were getting better at not being so weirded out by how he perceived the world. Not that Claire had ever been _that_ bothered. “That’d be because it’s relaxed.” She was focused in on stitching his wound, almost sounding like she was giving the conversation the barest amount of attention. “Well, my dad’s Jamaican, so you’re not wrong there.”

“And your mum?”

“Cuban,” Claire said, dabbing the blood away before carrying on with her work. “They met while my dad was doing seasonal work in Havana. Got married before the end of summer, and she moved back with him to Jamaica.“

“Were you born there?”

“No, no. They moved to Brixton - they were in the tail end of the windrush generation - had me a few years later once they’d gotten settled in.” She clipped the end of the thread, wiped the wound again, then put a piece of gauze over it. “Hold this.”

Matt obediently did so, his fingers over the fine threads as she took off her gloves and fiddled with the tape. “Have you ever been there?”

“To the Caribbean?” He nodded. “No. Too expensive.”

“Would you? If you had the money?”

Claire huffed and carefully lay a strip of tape over one side. “Why? You offering to pay me?”

Matt shuffled upright. “I can get you some money if you need it--”

“I don’t need money, Matt, I’m fine,” Claire cut in. “Well, a payrise wouldn’t be bad, but I think the NHS is a tad beyond your scope.”

“Just a little.” They fell into silence for a moment as she finished up with the tape and began packing away her stuff. “You didn’t answer the question.”

She threw the needle into the sharps container, rattling full of evidence of their work. “I would, yeah. I’d love to see Havana, especially.” Matt nodded and plucked his bloody undershirt up from where he’d discarded it. The worst part about getting an injury that needed him to take his clothes off was always putting them back on when they were cold and damp.

“Maybe one day.”

“Sure,” she agreed as he wrangled the armour back on; he’d have to speak to Melvin about getting it mended. “Take it easy until I take those stitches out, okay? Come back in a couple days so I can check them.”

“I’ll try,” he said wryly. She knew as well as him that he could take them out himself. “Thanks, Claire,” he said, fixing his mask over his face, one leg already out the window.

Claire was hugging herself, one hand on a bony elbow. He’d love to stay longer; he always would. But she was there to fix him up and nothing more. One day he’d figure out how to make this street two-way. “No problem. See you later, Matt.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I think the will arrived this morning,” Matt said casually a month later.

“Do you-- did you bring it with you?”

Matt turned to face Foggy. “Why would I bring my Dad’s will to work?”

“Do not try and say that is not exactly something you would do,” Foggy said accusingly. Matt snorted. “Want me to read it tonight?”

“No,” Matt said. “Let’s wait until everything comes through.”

Matt winced; he knew he sounded thin. He was putting it off. Foggy hummed, sounding like he was about to say something then decided against it. What he did say was, “Alright. Just let me know.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

MATT MURDOCK 13:33

I think the birth certificate arrived

 

FOGGY NELSON 13:35

Today, then?

 

MATT MURDOCK 18:02

I’ll be round in a couple hours

 

 

* * *

 

 

The documents felt heavy in his leather satchel bag as he walked from his flat to Foggy’s, as they’d weighed on his mind through the past month. He felt more anxious than he’d been waiting for this university results to come through, because the more he’d realised that he would eventually have to face it, the more invested he became in what might be revealed by the inconspicuous pieces of paper.

On opening the door, the first thing Foggy said was, “Jesus, Matt, did you get hit by a truck?”

“Not recently, no,” Matt deadpanned.

“What happened?”

Matt didn’t respond, instead pushing into Foggy’s flat and dumping his bag on the kitchen table so he could root through it to pull out the open envelopes. “They’re here.”

“Yeah, dude-- I just--” Foggy faltered, trailing after him and stopping in the doorway to hover. “You’re looking after yourself, right?”

“Yes,” Matt replied sharply. “Can we just--?” He waved a hand and bit on his lower lip. “I just want to get it over with.”

Foggy sighed. “Okay. But take a night off tonight, okay?”

“Yeah, whatever, sure.”

“No, Matt,” Foggy said sharply, coming a little bit closer, his arms crossed over his chest. “You gotta take a break. You can’t take clients like this, and you sure as fuck can’t go to court--”

“I said sure,” Matt snapped back, then reeled himself in. _Getting sloppy,_ murmured a dark thing in his head. _Gonna get yourself killed._ “Sorry. I’m…” He trailed off, unsure where to go with it.

Foggy just wrapped an arm around Matt’s shoulder and pulled him in for a second. Matt felt his face warm slightly. “C’mon. Let’s get this over with. I have beers in the fridge.”

He released Matt and opened the fridge door to pull out a couple of bottles. “You need to throw out that takeaway,” Matt said, wrinkling his nose.

“Stop creeping on my leftovers,” Foggy said, handing Matt a beer. They relocated to the table, and Foggy shuffled the papers about, pulling them from the envelopes and flipping them so the ink-laden side was face down. “Okay. Ready?”

“Not really,” Matt breathed, jittery.

“We don’t have to--”

“No. Do it.”

“Okay. Will or birth certificate?”

“The will,” Matt said firmly. His Dad’s last words was most important.

“Okay. The will.” Foggy cleared his throat and began to read.

_This is the final will and testimony of Jack Murdock, made in sound mind and body. In the event of my death, I would like my personal possessions to be sold - with the exception of anything my son Matthew Michael Murdock would like to keep - and the proceeds to pay for a funeral, to pay for any outstanding late rent on my flat, and to ensure that Matthew will be taken to St. Agnes Convent in London (I will write the exact address and telephone number below). Here I would like him to be taken care of by his mother, Margaret Murdock (nee. Bexley), who to the best of my knowledge is a Sister at the convent._

Matt’s stomach dropped through the floor. He swallowed, his hand in a tight fist, and Foggy mumbled, “Do you want me to carry on? There’s more.”

“Yes,” he choked out. “Please.”

Foggy cleared his throat.

_Matthew at the time of writing does not know who his mother is, so this information is to be revealed at Maggie’s discretion. But I would like for him to know soon and not grow up parentless. If Maggie does take Matt, then I would like any remaining funds in my account to be donated to the convent to pay for his upbringing. If she cannot be found or does not want to take Matt then I would like Denny Connor O’Malley (he usually goes by K.O. and can be found at Fogwell’s) to take him._

Foggy paused. “The rest of this is more about his money and the execution of the funeral, I think.” Matt nodded and leaned back in his chair, dizzy with it. “So... do you know her?”

“Sister Margaret,” Matt whispered, the pieces falling together and leaving a crater on their impact. “Oh my God. She was the-- you saw her, she was the nun who dropped me off at uni--”

Matt’s hand came up in a vague motion, like he was going to rub his face, maybe, but his intentions faded off half way and left him lost. He felt dizzy. “Are you alright?” Foggy asked, a sharply urgent concern in his voice.

“The birth certificate,” Matt muttered. “Does it say Margaret?”

Some shuffling of papers. “...Yeah. Belfast City Hospital, Jack Murdock, Margaret Murdock.”

Matt nodded mutely, then jumped up, grabbed his jacket and cane, and left.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I thought I wasn’t good enough to be fostered!” Matt exclaimed, turning on his heel because he couldn’t bear for her to see his face. “Fuck! Every kid at the convent was a difficult kid, but I didn’t even have a social worker! Could you even _imagine--_ ”

“Matthew,” Margaret began from where she sat as Matt paced. Salt was in the cold basement air, coming from both of them. He didn’t care. “I wanted to, but I wasn’t-- I wasn’t going to be good for you. I was sure that I’d just complicate things--”

“So you left us,” Matt spat, his anger writing his words for him, and he just couldn’t stop because this was his broken, incomplete, fucked up childhood and it hurt so much he thought maybe he could die from it. This wasn’t razor-sharp court fury where his words came out perfectly formed, or Devil fury, where his hits landed true. This was messy and unweaving and raw. “You left us cause you was scared of being a mam?”

She didn’t respond for a long moment; long enough that Matt just got even _more_ angry that she wasn’t replying. But then, through the unbearable silence, Sister Margaret said softly, “God, Matthew.” She sucked in a breath. Exhaled through a bitter laugh. “Sometimes you really do sound like your father.”

Matt snorted. Paced away from her, so he was at the other side of the basement. “Is that something I should apologise for?”

“No,” she said. “Your father was a good man.”

“Yeah. I guess that’s why you left him.”

“Matthew,” she said sharply, like he was still a kid under her care, like it’d make him bow to her like it had in the past. Like she was his mother.

It only aggravated him more. “What the fuck did you think was going to happen when I found out? Because I _was_ going to find out, eventually.”

“I don’t know.” Sister Margaret’s head raised his way. “I just hoped-- I suppose I just hoped that you’d understand.”

" _How--_ how could I _ever_ understand?” Matt threw his hands up. “I still don’t know what the fuck happened!”

“Do you _want_ me to explain, or do you just want to rant?” Sister Margaret said sharply. Matt waved a hand in her direction. She let out a breath, then began, “How much do you know about the Troubles?”

“Oh, for-- are you going to blame this on the _Troubles?_ ”

“Matthew Murdock--”

“Stop trying to-- do that thing like when I was a kid--”

“I will when you stop acting like a child--”

“ _I’m_ acting like a child? Says the woman who avoided responsibility for a couple decades--”

“Matt,” Sister Margaret snapped, “do you want an explanation or not?”

“Yes!” he blurted out.

Matt tried to unfurl his fists, tried to avoid the temptation to punch a wall. He was sure, for a moment, that she wasn’t going to tell him, that she’d decide again to leave him in the dark.

But eventually Sister Margaret began. “The Troubles were well underway when you were born. I went over to Northern Ireland as a young woman to give humanitarian aid - you have to understand, Belfast was like a warzone. Troops patrolling, armed British solidiers, craters in the street. There were, and still are, high walls built between Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods to prevent violence. I hadn’t taken my vows yet; I was still in training. But I met Jack at a boxing match, and left the church for him. I was pregnant just a few months later. We got married the week we found out.” She laughed softly. “Everything seemed… perfect, for a while, but then when it came to the birth, I…

“I felt numb. I felt inadequate.” Sister Margaret’s composure was breaking, cracking. It was possibly the most vulnerable Matt had ever heard her be. She always, _always_ had a certain tightly wound dignity, even when she was angry. But of course she had appeared that way. Matt had been under her care. “Not a lot then was known about postpartum depression. I just thought I was broken, a bad mother, I-- I didn’t understand what was happening, why I...”

She trailed off, and it was starting to weedle in through his anger, the weight of her words. Another long stretch of silence. She rocked minutely, a tiny movement that Matt could barely even sense. Up in the church, people whispered as they passed through the knave, like they too knew they had to be respectfully quiet as the story was spun.

“I wasn’t looking after you. Jack knew I was sick, and he did everything he could to help me, but I ended up contacting the church, a lifeline while I was drowning. Father Lantom came and collected me, took me back to England.”

It seemed final, but it couldn’t be the end of the story. There _had_ to be more. “So what happened to me and Dad?”

“I don’t really know, to be honest,” Sister Margaret admitted with a dignified sniff, wiping at her nose. “I got a letter from him, saying that he’d decided to go to Dublin. He gave me his new address, and that he’d found a gym to sponsor him to box.” She chuckled, stronger this time. “As it turns out, it doesn’t much matter where you’re from if your job is getting your arse handed to you.”

“You… you never followed up?”

“Until he died, and I got delivered an angry, grieving ten year old boy who I didn’t know what to do with except try to settle him into a brand new country,” she said, like it was justifiable, like it was a valid excuse, like it made any fucking sense at all.

“So you decided not to tell me anything at all,” Matt said, the fury rolling back into his blood. He didn’t know what it said about him that he found anger so _easy_ to settle into. “You just let me grieve the death of my _father_ by myself.”

“I know I didn’t do the right thing, but I did intend to tell you eventually--”

“But. You. Didn’t.” Matt’s tone was sharp, cutting, outwardly calm. He’d never hit anyone who wasn’t about to hurt him or someone else, but he knew damn well that words could be worse than a blow. So here he was; getting his own back, fifteen years late. “You’ve known me for _most my life_ , Sister. You had your time. Instead, you wanted to have your cake and eat it too.” His voice was rising now, and the words felt incredible as they fell out of his mouth. “I don’t care that you left. We got by fine without you. What I care about is the fact you were were so cowardly and-- _immoral_ to lie to me. Every _minute_ of every single day you’ve known me.”

Sister Margaret sighed, deeply. “I was.”

It wasn’t the reaction Matt wanted. He didn’t want a quiet acceptance of guilt amongst petty excuses. He wanted to _argue_ , to scream and fight and press fingers into the wound until it gushed blood, like that’d make the pain he was feeling more legitimate.

Matt couldn’t take it anymore. Without another word, he scooped up his cane from where he’d propped it up against the entrance, and climbed the stairs out of the basement, leaving Sister Margaret sniffling behind him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Matt woke the next morning on Foggy’s sofa, feeling like he’d been dragged through hell and back. For a brief moment, he was completely convinced that everything was terrible, and that he’d much rather sleep, but he could hear Foggy in the bathroom brushing his teeth. Getting ready to go to work - fuck, it was a Monday. The thought of going into work made him want to give up, but he pushed himself up so he was upright anyway, then stayed stock still for a couple minutes, fighting a wave of nausea.

Foggy ambled through from the bathroom, towelling his damp hair. “Morning, sunshine.”

“What time is it?”

“Eight. I already called Karen, said you wouldn’t be in.”

Matt’s mouth was sticky and parched, and he swallowed uncomfortably around nothing. “I’ll come in later.”

“Take the day, pal, we’ll be fine. Want a bacon sarnie?”

“I’ll make it,” Matt said, finally clambering onto his feet, then realising he was down to his boxers. “Where are my clothes?”

“Kicking around somewhere, hang on,” Foggy said, then a piece of material smelling of alcohol, sweat, and vague meat-food flew his way. He plucked it out of the air and grimaced. “You’re the one who wanted doner kebab.”

“I don’t even like doner kebab.”

“Yeah, I told you that.” Foggy chucked a rattling pair of jeans his way too, and Matt put those on first, almost overbalancing. “Want a spare t-shirt?”

“I’m fine.” Foggy’s t-shirts always fit a little weirdly. “What happened last night?”

“Well, I found you drowning your sorrows in Josie’s after you sent me a fairly ominous text about… being offended people knew you? I don’t know, it was weird. You almost tried to give Josie two fingers, and then when I tried to stop you, you got angry because you wanted her to murder you?” Foggy walked to the kitchen as Matt got dressed, filling up a glass of water from the pitcher in the fridge. “I didn’t trust you wouldn't--” Foggy paused, and Matt felt a chill over the back of his neck. “Well, climb out of a window the moment I left you alone. I practically had to drag you away from going to an off-licence. We got some food and I took you back to mine. Then you pretty much just got teary-eyed and told me you wanted to sleep, so I left you to it.”

“Thanks for looking after me,” Matt said quietly, shuffling over to the kitchen then leaning on the counter when he was hit with another wave of sickness.

Foggy just hummed and put the glass of water in front of him. There was an oddly tense moment after, where Foggy was chewing on the inside of his cheek as he thought. “Matt, I… You’re doing okay, right?”

“Yeah, Foggy. Yes. I’m fine.”

Matt felt like he was transparent. Foggy swallowed. “I just… I don’t know if I’m reading much into this, but the whole… _being murdered_ thing…”

“It’s nothing,” Matt said quickly.

“In uni, once, you said this thing, and I never really… I wasn’t even sure if you remembered it,” Foggy said, his heart fast in his chest. Matt wanted badly to lie down and be left alone. “You were drunk as hell and sad and blurted out that you sometimes wanted to be killed--”

“I was probably just joking.”

Foggy’s voice was level and damning. “Matt, I’ve known you for a couple years short of a decade. I know when you’re joking.”

Matt was cold and hot simultaneously; the silence ticked on and on and on. Every second was another nail in the coffin with no name, the one Matt had been a pallbearer to for so long he couldn’t remember what it was to have no weight on his shoulders. He hadn’t expected that Foggy would’ve noticed. He didn’t expect anyone to notice something like this and he _knew_ something was wrong because something was _always wrong with him_ so this was hardly new, but--

He needed to respond. Fog was waiting. He needed to--

“It’s okay,” Foggy said softly. Matt’s heart clenched. “I know talking about this isn’t easy for you.”

“I don’t want to talk,” Matt snapped. The only option he had left - flick the switch - push them away. “What exactly are you accusing me of?”

“Matt…” Foggy sighed.

“Yeah, well,” Matt began, then cut himself off, rocking on his feet for a moment. “I’ll be in later,” he said eventually. “And tell Karen not to worry, too.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

A few days later, a private detective--

Well, she was found with the body of a man, by the docks.

Was it the chic radio presenter? Or maybe one of the dozen other bystanders? So the story went that the man had ordered one of them to kill him. But the story also went that the P.I. was mental or lying or a member of some underground fight club or that this was a publicity stunt or that it was actually some other dead celebrity or the man was a Russian oligarch or, or, or--

It went on and on, the conspiracies. It caught the public’s eye, the noir nature of it, the mystery and the scandal. A killing by the docks. It was very Sherlockian.

 _VICIOUS VIGILANTE ATTACK IN VAUXHALL_ , said the tabloid headlines. _WHO WATCHES THE WATCHMEN?_

 

 

* * *

 

 

“A passport application?” Claire said, flipping the papers over in her hands. “An _Irish_ passport application?”

Matt shifted on his feet, hands resting on his cane. “I just need you to sign off that I’m-- a real person who exists, or whatever.”

“Can’t your-- what’s he called, Muggy? Can he not do it?”

“Foggy, and no. He’s away.” A lie, actually, but Matt didn’t want to talk to Foggy about this whole thing, so avoiding the topic entirely seemed like the way to go.

Claire nodded, biting thoughtfully on the inside of her lip. “You’ll let me look at those stitches, yeah? I told you to come back so I could look at them.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. I took out them out.”

“And I’m just supposed to believe you haven’t managed to get it infected?”

Matt tilted his head and raised his eyebrows slightly, a reasonable gesture with the hand not on his cane. “Claire, if you want to see me with my shirt off, all you have to do is ask.”

She laughed and shook her head, moving out of the doorway to let him in. “Cheeky bugger.”

Matt followed her through the hall into her home, feeling strange to be in his civvies in her flat. He collapsed his cane down and set it gently on the kitchen table, where Claire had plonked herself down, clicking a biro pen she’d magicked out of nowhere. She didn’t smell of her scrubs - blood and bleach and all sorts of grim human fluids - so both of them were, he supposed, in their normal people clothes. Still, the remnants of her job followed her, skin-deep; a sterile scent to her skin, raw dryness to her hands. Blood followed him too, no matter how hard he scrubbed.

“So what do I need to do here, then?” she asked, shuffling the papers about.

“Just fill in Section 9,” Matt said as he tapped the table idly. He tried listening out for the two girls he’d overheard last time he was here, but no such luck. There was a heartbeat in the flat, but it was slow with sleep.

“I didn’t know you were eligible for an Irish passport.” Claire’s pen had stopped scribbling for a moment, head turned up to him. Matt tore himself away from his probing.

“I can’t tell you everything about me,” Matt replied cheekily. “Then I’d lose my allure.”

Claire snorted. “You don’t tell me anything about you.”

“And you don’t tell me everything, either.”

“Yeah, well, there’s a fine line between being mysterious and being a wanker.”

Her comment was pointed, but not angry. An observation, more than anything. Matt licked his bottom lip and gave a conceding half-shrug, turning to wander to her bookcase as she wrote. He didn’t generally get to snoop much when he was here on business - not that this was really a social call. He ran his finger down the spine of one book, but the letters were too big for him to decode easily. “It just didn’t seem relevant,” he said. “The Irish thing.”

That wasn’t quite true. He hadn’t mentioned it because he’d been worried about someone drawing the line between _Irish_ and _terrorist_ , though she’d grown up in the same world as he had, one at the turn of the century engulfed in a completely different terrorism fear. The older he got, the less of a problem it’d become for him. But then again, his accent had faded and jumbled, and it was pretty much only Irish people who’d ask if he grew up there, specifically. Otherwise, he got assumptions from a baffling number of places. “Who filled this in, then?” Claire asked.

“I went to the Irish embassy. Seemed like the easiest thing to do. I’m going to head back over there once you’re done with it.”

“In a rush, huh?” Matt just made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat, and Claire shuffled up the papers. “I think that’s everything.”

He slid them off the table and back into the envelope he’d been given at the embassy. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah. Shirt off. I need to check that cut.”

“Claire…” he groaned.

“No. Come on.”

With a resigned sigh, he reached his fingers around the slick material of his tie and began to loosen it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The government was discussing laws to crack down on vigilantism because Daredevil’s existence, and the copycats who came after, were a twofold failure. The first failure was that they were needed at all, and the second that they hadn’t been stopped yet.

It didn’t bother Matt at all. If anything, he’d like to see them try.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Karen gently dabbed concealer over the bruise on his cheekbone with her finger, the strange feeling of it spreading over his skin. “You can’t go to court like that,” Foggy’d said. He was right, and Matt was letting them down again. He couldn’t go walking around like he was getting the shit beaten out of him on the regular. It’d give people the wrong idea.

Foggy was watching Karen work from the kitchenette, a steaming mug of coffee in his hand, files in the other, tucked next to his side. Matt had no clue how they did it, but they managed to make pure silence _disappointed_. When she was done, Karen mumbled, “There. Good as new.”

They dispersed quickly afterwards, like woodlice after the rock has been turned over.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Matt tore open the envelope, then ran his fingers over the front of the faux-leather cover.

 

_An tAontas Eorpach_

_European Union_

 

_ÉIRE_

_IRELAND_

 

_PAS_

_PASSPORT_

 

 

* * *

 

 

Matt’s fingers were still damp from the holy water at the entrance to the church when Sister Elizabeth rushed up to him, her skirts leaving a swirl of air in her wake.

“Matthew,” she called urgently.

Matt hadn’t expected to bump into her - he was just visiting for his usual confession. She’d seemed old when he was a kid, but now she seemed ancient and-- small. Tiny, even, only a little taller than--

“What’s wrong?” Matt replied, coming to a stop. The church was deadly silent, and the orphanage skittered on his consciousness, chattering. Like the sound of the lecture halls he had hovered outside with his backpack strap clutched in his hand, wondering if it was worth stepping in, if his degree was worth getting.

“Father Lantom’s been taken to hospital.” Sister Elizabeth’s breath stuttered, and Matt realised uncomfortably that she was almost on the edge of tears. It seemed inappropriate to say something; it seemed inappropriate to stay silent. “It’s serious.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Lantom’s weak hand was clasped between Matt’s. He could feel where the thin skin lay over veins, the shuddering creak of the joints, every pulse that didn’t quite pump hard enough.

Foggy’s dad was in poor health. Karen’s mum was dead. Marci’s dad had died last year, and others from their university class were starting to lose parents. Death was a silent, shadowy compatriot to the kind of age they were.

Still, Matt cried. He’d always cried easily, especially in front of Lantom, who’d never as a child told him to stop or be quiet or grow up. Lantom huffed and shook his head. “Come on, now, Matthew,” he said comfortingly, and that was wrong, because Matt should be comforting _him_ right now, except Matt didn’t know what to say except:

“Please-- don’t.” It came out as a whisper.

Lantom swallowed thickly. “I think I’m ready to meet the guy I’ve been going on about for half my life,” he joked. “It’s about time, don’t you think?”

Matt was begging - he couldn’t bring himself to care. “ _Please_ , Father.”

Lantom’s hand squeezed his tightly, then his trembling fingers rose to Matt’s hair to brush a strand out of his face. It made Matt’s heart crack. The hand dropped weakly to lay on the sterile hospital sheets. “I know, son. I know.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Lantom died a few days later, surrounded by the clergy he’d worked with all his life, his last rites delivered by a priest from a neighboring church who he’d been close friends with but Matt had barely ever come into contact with. The funeral was packed, the kids squirming in the front seats, people like Matt who grew up in the church sniffing at the back. For the first time in years, he even saw his old roommate Joseph. They shook hands, promised to catch up over a beer sometime. Matt was exhausted by the prospect.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Karen asked. Normally, it would be comforting that Foggy was pressed against his side, but everything felt so raw today it was just irritating to his skin and nerves. Matt’d quietly asked if they could just stay and sit quietly for a while after the end of the funeral, especially since Matt couldn’t stand to be in a crematorium.

“Fine. I think I’m just going to go home and sleep,” Matt said. He could sense Foggy and Karen sharing a glance between the two of them, and he wished they’d just fucking tell him what they were thinking. Sighted people could be so fucking exhausting.

“We could go to Josie’s,” Foggy said.

“I wouldn’t mind a drink,” Karen added.

Matt almost - _almost_ \- snapped that that was because she was basically an alcoholic. But he swallowed down the barb and said, “I’m fine. I’m going to go home.”

“Or we could get a takeaway--” Foggy jumped in.

“Watch a movie?”

“I still haven’t watched _I, Daniel Blake,_ and you said you wanted to see it--”

“I don’t want to,” Matt snapped. “I’m going home.” The two of them shut up abruptly, an awkward tenseness to the silence that followed. Heart hurting, Matt stood up, uncollapsed his cane, and said over his shoulder as he walked away, “I’ll see you later.”

He really had intended to go home and sleep - he’d been out a lot at night recently - but obviously, the universe had other plans, because life was one long shitshow and he never caught a break. On his way home, he overheard, in one of the twisting London alleyways, what sounded like was going to be a knife crime in about two minutes - what idiots stabbed each other in broad daylight? - so he dropped his cane in a bush and wrapped his black funeral tie around his eyes.

Kids, obviously. It was always kids. Matt managed to get a couple good kicks in, and swung his hand, realising just a moment too late that he was coming at it from completely the wrong angle with no wraps on his hands and--

_SNAP!_

An electric shock of pain flooded up his arm and a gush of dizzying adrenaline ran hot through his veins. He almost screamed, almost bit through his tongue in an attempt to keep it inside. The bone was poking up into his skin of his wrist. It made his stomach turn.

The kids were scarpering, perhaps thinking that the noise came from their mate’s jaw being broken. Matt leant against a wall, cradling his arm to his chest weakly, trying to breathe through it as his head swam. He’d had worse, he reminded himself. He could handle this.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Claire said a few hours later when she came home to him curled up on her sofa. She smelt like she’d been on a shift, a tired and hard edge to her voice that made a small part of him flinch away in a way his body never would. _Burden_ , whispered the dark thing. “I can’t exactly do an x-ray from my apartment, Matt.”

“Sorry,” Matt said. His head felt stuffed and numb, his attention constantly swinging back to the grinding noise of his bones like the needlepoint of a compass.

“I’ll take you to A&E,” she sighed.

Matt shook his head, clambering up, his hand still to his chest. “Don’t worry. I’ll just get a cab there.”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“Jesus, Matty, what did you do?” Foggy said as soon as he turned the corner to the ward to see Matt slumped miserably on a bed, legs swinging over the edge.

“Tripped?” Matt said weakly, trying to grin up to Foggy but feeling quiet and pathetic, the way he always did after bad injuries. Foggy rushed up to him, dropping his satchel bag on the floor next to the wheels of Matt’s bed.

“C’mere,” Foggy said, drawing Matt into his chest for a warm but careful hug. Like he was made of glass.

The nurse who’d been overseeing Matt ambled up. “Is this your lift home?”

“Yeah,” Foggy said to the nurse, pulling away. He was still dressed in the clothes from the funeral for some reason; Matt could smell the incense. It must midnight by now. Matt’d only called him because these arseholes refused to let a him go home by himself.

“Thanks, Fog. Sorry about this.”

“It’s never any problem, you hear?” Foggy was turned to Matt, facing him directly, an anxiety in his voice that confused Matt and didn’t penetrate through the haze of doubt. “It’s never any problem to ask for help. I’ll always help you when you need it.”

“Okay,” Matt said, and it seemed to be the answer Foggy wanted, because he turned to the nurse to begin arrangements.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The next night, Matt was slumped on the end of his bed in his underwear, feeling over the ridges of the fiberglass plaster as sickness and anger rose up his throat.

The floor below him, a man sneered to his girlfriend, saying something horrible, and on the street, he could hear an argument underway. A girl was being cat-called by a drunk crowd of boys, all of them underage. Claws scraped on the street as a dog was yanked on its lead. A toddler was wailing in the building opposite, young terror from a nightmare, the exhausted father hushing the infant on his hip. A little boy cried to himself, mumbling platitudes and reassurances to the empty room.

Matt shivered and pulled his duvet up to his shoulders, slumping down onto his side.

_Useless. Fucking useless._

 

 

* * *

 

 

Foggy and Karen tried, they really did. Matt filled the hours he used to spend out on patrol sleeping the past few weeks, but it wasn’t a good sleep. It felt dirty, somehow, unearned. He tried to drag himself up and out to whatever they planned, but sometimes all Matt wanted to do was absolutely nothing.

He prayed a lot to Lantom (which he felt guilty about, because he wasn’t sure if it was alright to pray to people in Heaven since he tended just to pray to his Confirmation Saint Michael, God, or Mary, but he didn’t know who to ask about it) seeking guidance that just never seemed to come. He wanted to talk about who he was without Daredevil, because the only answer he kept on circling back to was _nothing_ . He half-considered talking to Foggy about it, but Matt was pretty sure he was tired of Daredevil discussions, and anyway, if Foggy knew _everything_ he’d probably get sick of Matt’s shit and leave.

It was a Saturday, and Matt couldn’t be bothered to get up today or go out, but Karen and Foggy’d decided to come to him instead, so Matt _had_ to shower, but he didn’t do his hair or shave.

“Are you growing out your beard?” Karen asked curiously.

“Yeah, thought I’d try it,” Matt said, because it seemed easier than saying that he just didn’t care enough to get rid of it.

They camped out on his sofas with beers and Foggy took Matt’s bottle out of his hand and cracked it open for him, chattering about nonsense.

He put it back on the table, not even pausing except to flick his keys with the opener onto the kitchen counter.

Matt knew Foggy hadn’t meant anything by it, but it was still infuriating, the assumed level of competence through the ground.

It was tiny. It meant nothing. But it still made something in him go cold and break.

 

 

* * *

 

 

MATT MURDOCK 05:21

Not coming into work today. Sorry

 

FOGGY NELSON 07:31

Sorry, just saw this. You alright?

 

FOGGY NELSON 08:05

???

 

FOGGY NELSON 08:41

Matt???

 

FOGGY NELSON 08:42

Are you hurt? Should I come visit you?

 

FOGGY NELSON 08:43

Gonna go ahead and hope you’re just sleeping. I’ll see you at lunchtime. Do you want something from Patisserie Valerie?

 

FOGGY NELSON 8:44

Nvm you don’t even like Patisserie Valerie. I’ll get you something from that place with the lightbulbs on string which I know in London doesn’t exactly narrow it down, but you know which one I mean

 

FOGGY NELSON 12:28

Okay seriously though where are you? Karen’s worried

 

KAREN PAGE 12:31

Hey Matt, it’s Karen. Just wondering where you are. Foggy’s a bit worried. Can you call one of us when you get this? Let us know that you’re okay xx

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this was so damn late, guys! I expected to get this out by the 29th of March, but, uhhh... Yeah, no. Uni kicked my ass, and I was stuck on this for a while, but I'm back in the game. You might also notice it's now 5 parts, not 3 - this part was getting super long, so I've split it into two. Next chapter should be out in a couple weeks (I've got most of it written already and it's sitting at around 9k), then an epilogue.
> 
> Big thanks as always to Pogopop (who recently posted a [one-shot fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18580144) about Mike being a real boy you should read!) for beta reading. As always feel free to comment or give me a shout on my [tumblr](https://sleepymoritz.tumblr.com/)!


	4. Honest Men, Who Honest Lived and Honest Died

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for TWs.
> 
> Chapter title from "I Wear This Because Life Is War!" by L.A. Salami. Thank you as always to my beta reader Pogopop and to Fletcher/warewolfs-nipples for his massive help in all things Irish.

 

After staying on the bus from the airport as long as he could bear, he deposited himself Dublin’s Northside and asked around until he was directed to a small hotel with a tiny lobby that was hot as hell. Matt felt like he’d been waiting for summer to end for months now. He was feverishly warm under his collar, still drowsy and dead on his feet from the Xanax he’d stolen months ago from a pimp, and took as his gate was announced. A cheerful young man gave him a key and lead him up to a small double room, chattering all the way.

“Thank you,” Matt said pointedly. He was so tired he felt dizzy and hadn’t expected the Xanax to fuck with him so badly; Foggy’s brother used to take it in college, and he never acted like how Matt felt at all. He felt underwater and… not present.

The man floundered for a moment before nodding. “Well, if ye need anything, give us a shout!”

Then Matt was alone in his room. He chucked his duffle bag on the bed - enough clothes for a week, so really, enough clothes for however long he could afford to pay for them to be cleaned.

Fogwell’s seemed like the obvious first place to go, and though he’d intended to push through the chemically induced exhaustion, even going so far as to shower and dress again, he ended up crawling into bed. A while later, he jerked out of sleep and fumbled for his phone.

“Fuck’s sake,” he muttered to himself. 6PM. He wasn’t sure how much of the day he’d lost.

Fogwell’s was over an hour’s walk away in an area called the Liberties, but Matt prefered to do that than mess about with public transport, plus he wanted to clear his head of the lethargy of sleep. The route his phone worked out for him took him mostly down residential streets until he hit the town centre, where he’d then be flush up against the river until he crossed it into Dublin 8. It occurred to him about halfway through his journey that it was essentially pointless to keep on using his cane. No one knew him here.

It felt dangerous, for some reason; he’d only ever act sighted as Daredevil. It was one of the lines between the two personas, but he was beyond caring, so he ducked into a sideroad and collapsed his cane down and took a couple deep breaths before carrying on. It felt… fine. Weird, but fine, and it was quiet enough that it was no effort at all to keep track of other pedestrians. Busy London streets could be tiring to navigate even for sighted people like Karen, never mind Matt.

Dublin felt nothing like the Dublin he left. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, as if he remembered that city from so long ago in anything other than out of order sensory snapshots. But the air here was London-like with fumes and birds and cigarette smoke and fast food, and Matt wondered if this was just what all cities smelt like, if he could wander to New York or Beijing or Berlin or Cape Town and feel as if he’d never left, as if he was in the same place he’d always been. Matt had never really been to the countryside, he’d never seen farm animals in real life before he was blinded, and it seemed somehow unthinkable that the countryside was more than the smell of the abattoirs that would drift in on hot days to the outskirts of London.

Once at the gym, he uncollapsed his cane and gripped it tight in two straining hands before pushing inside. Stepping through the door was like being suckerpunched. The acoustics of the room, the smell of it, all the exact same. There was some sort of class going on, and the familiar sounds of leather hitting leather, feet landing lightly on mats, and grunts echoed off the bare, crumbling high walls. Sweat, old clothes, and dust. The stuff of pure time travel.

“Can I help ye?” asked a man, who was in the corner holding up target pads for an exhausted woman, heart thrumming madly and sweat rolling off her skin. She dropped her arms, shaking off the built up chemical strain.

“I’m looking for a Denny Connor O’Malley,” Matt said. “Might go by KO?”

“KO?” The man chortled, then turned to the young woman, who was presumably his trainee. “Hey, no slackin’, now. Shadow box while I talk to the gentleman.”

She groaned but nodded, immediately beginning to swipe at and side-step an imaginary opponent. The man approached, his footsteps making the floorboards creak, the air displacement signifying him as a heavy-set man, not to mention the boom of his voice. He was Fisk-like in figure, almost, but not in demeanor. “Do you know him?” Matt asked hopefully.

“I know Denny. Why ye wantin’ him?” It wasn’t a suspicious question - more just politely curious.

“I think my dad knew him - he was a professional boxer here - and I’m-- I’m on something of a pilgrimage.”

“Interesting, interesting,” said the man. “Well, ye can ask him yourself. He’s the big ol’ cunt in the office. Just go up the stairs at the back and to the left and, ah, shit. Can you find doors alright?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s the first door on yer left.”

Matt thanked the man and and walked over to a short hallway at the back, which had wood-panelled walls covered with what Matt assumed to be framed pictures. Up a narrow staircase, the slow, steady heart that he had been hearing came marginally more into focus, as did more sensory information; a smell of Old Spice, cologne, and ointment, the sounds of buzzing electronics. He could also second heartbeat, quicker and quieter, which, given the smell, was undoubtedly a dog.

Matt pushed inside nervously. “Are you Denny? The guy downstairs pointed me up here.”

“That I am.”

“I hope you’re not too busy--”

“No, no, go ahead. What can I help ye with?”

Matt stuck out his hand. “Matt Murdock. I’m Battlin’ Jack’s--”

He didn’t get to finish the sentence, because Denny let out an astounded laugh and enveloped Matt in a hug. “Jackie’s boy!”

Matt closed his free hand around Denny’s broad shoulder, and the dog ambled up onto its feet to sniff around their legs and wag its tail, excited because its owner was. “Yeah,” he breathed, “that’s me.”

“Holy Mary!” Denny exclaimed, pulling back to put both his hands in Matt’s shoulders and examine him closely. “Look at ye! You’re a big man, aren’t ye?”

Matt laughed, feeling himself go a little red in the face. “Thanks.”

“Take a pew, take a pew! I can’t believe you’re here,” Denny began excitedly as they both took a seat. “God, I haven’t seen ye in dog’s years. How long’s it been?”

“About fifteen years,” Matt told him, collapsing his cane.

“God, has Jack really been gone fifteen years?” Denny said wistfully. “Y’know, not a day goes by, my son, where I don’t think o’ him, not a day goes by. And you, of course-- awk, how are ye, how are ye?”

Denny fell expectantly silent, and Matt shrugged into the silence. How was he? Fucking awful, thanks for asking. “Well, I’m a solicitor now.”

“And how’s that?”

“Great, um, actually.” Not great recently, he mentally filled in, but Denny didn’t need to know that. “Me and my best friend have our own practice in Brixton, so we get to choose our own clients. We do a lot of pro bono work.”

Denny hummed knowingly. “And do ye have a special lady in your life?” It was a familial question, one that Foggy had been asked at pretty much every Nelson gathering since he hit sixteen. Matt wondered, as he had been constantly since he’d found out, what his childhood might’ve been like under his man’s watch instead of a church’s.

“Oh, all the ladies in my life are special,” Matt said seriously, which Denny laughed at. “But, uh-- in answer to your question, I’m single at the moment. What-- what about you? I think you were… married? And had a kid?”

“Clara, she was barely six when Jack died,” Denny said, suddenly becoming more sober. “But aye, she’s downstairs - she’s semi-pro, at the moment. Me and Mary split up, though.” Matt made a sympathetic noise, and Denny waved it away. “No, no, no. Long time coming, and better for the kid that way. And I have to say, me and Mary were gutted that you were taken to England. Jack was Clara’s Godfather, and though we weren’t your Godparents, we’d hoped to-- well.”

“Take me in,” Matt whispered.

Denny nodded solemnly. “I really am sorry for all that happened. We should’ve fought harder to keep you in the country, but-- ah, I dunno. Ye probably _were_ better off in England with yer mam, and God knows me and Mary had enough problems at the time.”

It floored Matt. He hadn’t really been aware that there’d been any kind of a fight behind the scenes to keep in in Ireland. An alternate universe unfolded in front of him, one too nebulous and heartbreaking not to quickly shove back inside its box. “I didn’t actually--” Matt hadn’t talked about this with anyone, yet. “Maggie, my-- mother, she didn’t tell me who she was. So-- I knew her as Sister Margaret.”

Denny recoiled. “She didn’t tell ye?”

“But I know now. I read Dad’s will. He said that if-- if she couldn’t take me, then he’d have liked it to be you to instead.”

“I would’ve liked it to be me,” Denny said quietly, then jumped back into his enthusiasm in a way Matt just couldn’t. “But the past’s the past. Tell me more about London!”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Matt was invited to dinner the next day, so he spent the evening finding a place to get food, then sat out on a bench with it until the sun set. Then he walked back to his hotel, to his tiny room, and felt like he was sinking.

He considered replying to the texts Foggy and Karen had left him. More since the morning, just general concern. It all felt very performative, like they didn’t _really_ care about where he was, but just that they _should_. Or even if they did think they cared-- he didn’t want their pity, anyway. He was fine.

Matt tore himself away from it. He took another shower, and sat on the bed with a towel around his middle and scrolled through the BBC News app on his phone. Then he switched to the Daily Mail Online and did a search for “Daredevil”.

_DAREDEVIL WARNED OFF BY LONDON MET’S PLEDGE?_

_FEARFUL HERO: WHERE’S DAREDEVIL?_

_FIVE THEORIES AS TO THE IDENTITY OF DAREDEVIL_

The last one caught his attention, but the article was, as he expected, complete nonsense, and none of the guesses were even _close_.

He wondered what he’d do if the press really did find out who he was. His stomach dropped; it was too uncomfortable to even think about. The press had turned to hating him in the past few years, despite his start of being called a hero; he could barely comprehend the contempt and the shit they’d dig up on him, if they realised who he was.

That night, in spite of how exhausted he was, sleep was finicky, and he still had another few pills with him. He hadn’t exactly _enjoyed_ his experience on Xanax, but--

Fuck, he wanted to sleep.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Though he woke up incredibly late, he felt sluggish the next afternoon as he got ready for dinner at Denny’s house. Through some absolute miracle, he actually managed to arrive some fifteen minutes before seven, the time they’d agreed to meet. He’d spent some time standing anxiously at the bottom of the street, considering turning back, but eventually just swallowed the fear and pushed onwards.

Clara was in, cradling a gurgling baby in her arms. It wasn’t her child, but her best friend’s, who’d gone to… somewhere or another with her husband. Family emergency, maybe? Honestly, Matt hadn’t even been listening, his attention instead consumed by the infant.

“Can I hold the baby?” Matt asked. He wasn’t sure why, but he really, really wanted to. There was an awkward pause, where Matt felt like the other two were exchanging a glance. “I’ve held one before.”

“Oh, grand,” she said, though Matt could still sense a little bit of reluctance to give a blind guy a kid. Still, they relocated to the living room, so Matt was perched on the edge of a sofa. He raised his arm and hand to meet the snuffling infant - Noah - then felt the comfortable weight of him as he transferred from Clara’s arms.

Abbie at the St. Agnes, who was pregnant at fifteen, bringing back the crying thing from hospital, exhausted and limping. The baby smelt weird, a whole host of new scents to add to his arsenal, only in trace amounts, no one but Matt could sense. Abbie had let him hold baby Gemma a few months later as she tiredly brushed out the knots in her hair, wondering aloud to Matt if she should just cut it off. Matt didn’t remember what he’d said in response, but it made her laugh, made Gemma gurgle happily.

She’d been kicked out the week she turned 18, toddler hitched up against her hip as she was taken to a halfway house.

Matt hadn’t been. He’d been given-- almost an entire year from his birthday in October to moving out in September. He was told it was because of his disability, because he had plans to go into higher education.

A luxury afforded to him because of Sister Margaret, he realised.

Matt felt sick, suddenly. Denny and Clara had been expectantly silent. “Take him off me.”

“Oh-- alright.”

“Take him--” Matt raised his arms, and as gently but quickly as possible, got Noah out of his hands. Once free, Matt let out a breath, feeling again eyes on him. “Sorry. I just--” He smiled and stood up. “Never mind. Do you need a hand setting the table?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I don’t think the English realise how much Brexit is going to fuck over the border,” Clara said, primly cutting up the chicken on her plate. She had the body of a fighter - confident grace and lean muscle - but was delicate in a way Matt never felt he was. No-- not delicate. Careful. In control. It felt like it’d be difficult to get a rise out of her. Baby Noah was upstairs sleeping, a monitor by Clara’s elbow.

“Aye, aye,” Denny agreed. “My cousin was a border smuggler-- got a lot of trouble from the British army. If the border gets guarded again, I wouldn’t be surprised at _all_ if we saw another Troubles.”

“Don’t over exaggerate, Dad,” Clara said, firmly but lightly. Denny laughed a little in response. The two of them had a great relationship, and bounced off each other well. It reminded Matt of Foggy and Anna. Were all parents and children like that, if they weren’t draped in layers of authority and propriety and the goddamn Catholic Church?

“Why do you think that?” Matt asked, turning from Clara’s comment to face Denny more fully.

The two of them stalled. “Ye don’t know much about it, ay?” Denny guessed.

“I wasn’t taught about it in school,” Matt said, feeling embarrassed. He really _should_ know this, and he felt acutely un _-_ Irish in not knowing.

“Because the Good Friday Agreement let people in Northern Ireland be both Irish _and_ British if they wanted, and so then people would be able to freely move in Ireland,” Clara said. “And the agreement was that Northern Ireland’s status wouldn’t be changed without its permission.”

“But it didn’t vote for Brexit,” Matt said. “So... leaving the E.U. is in breach of that?”

“Exactly,” Clara agreed over her wine glass. She took a sip, then set it down gently. It was only her and Matt drinking; Denny didn’t. “And if Ireland is in the E.U., and Northern Ireland isn’t, there’d have to be a hard border.”

“The border shouldn’t be there at all,” Denny added under his breath.

Suddenly curious, Matt asked, “What did my Dad think about it all? The Troubles?”

“He didn’t tend to talk about things like that,” Denny said carefully. “It was rough, for him. His ma died because of it, obviously, so--”

“My _grandma died_ because of it?” Matt was stunned. It was the first he’d heard of it. Snapshots of morbid tableaus flooded through his mind.

“Jack didn’t tell you? Or your ma?”

“No - what happened?”

“Are you sure you want to do this over dinner?” Clara asked softly, cutting into Denny’s breath as he was about to start explaining.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine,” Matt said.

“It wasn’t-- direct,” Denny began uncomfortably. A flood of relief overcame Matt. “There was a targeted attack against Catholics and it killed her brother - so, Jack’s...” He trailed off.

“Great-uncle?” Clara suggested.

Denny thought about, then shrugged. “Aye, possibly. Anyway, she never really got over it - it was the stress of it all. Heart attack. From what Jack’d told me, he wouldn’t have moved from the North if it weren’t for you. He met my cousin while he was in the border towns, and gave me a very good word about Jack, so I let the two of ye sleep in the gym in ‘til he got on his feet.”

Matt sat back and absorbed that. It’d never occured to his child self to question why they’d moved to Dublin, or if he had, he clearly hadn’t been told the reality of it. The food in front of him suddenly seemed unappetising and inedible.

Denny carried on, softly. “He loved ye, very much, my son. Being a parent makes ye scared for yer life - it’s why I stopped boxin’, in the end. He didn’t want ye to live in fear. Jack wanted ye to learn Irish, too, but the British had more or less wiped it out in Northern Ireland, so he got you into a gaelscoil once ye were old enough. I probably wouldn’t have enrolled Clara into one, either, if Jackie hadn’t made such a good argument about it all.”

“A gaelscoil is an Irish-speaking primary school,” Clara filled in, and the moment she said it, it was as if he’d already known it but just needed to be reminded.

“If he was scared about dying,” Matt said, hating his voice for how it wobbled, “why did he...?”

“Refuse to throw the fight?” Denny guessed. Matt jerked his head down. “Because he was a good man, and wanted ye to be one, too. I don’t think he expected to die for it.”

 

 

* * *

 

  


After dinner, Denny offered Matt a place to stay whilst he was in Ireland, which he of course turned down. He left, feeling out of it and very much so like a stranger in the city, one whose presence would neither be noticed nor missed. Drifting between the other pedestrians, the mild summer air felt strange, like dipping his hand into water that was the exact temperature of his skin. He ended up in a pub again, mostly for lack of any better ideas and a discomfort at going back to his empty room, where the walls seemed to close in.

Matt ordered the same beer he usually did before he even thought about it, and sat absorbing the chatter around him, listening in particularly to one heated conversation about the local music scene and some dickheads within it. It took him a moment to single out the soft trainers on the sticky pub floor; a woman, slightly tipsy, coming to the bar where he was sat.

She rest her elbows on the wood, an air of boredom given away by the patter of her heart, leaning forward slightly, then turned to him. “Come here a lot?”

Matt tilted his head, and debated not replying, playing deaf or something, but instead he shrugged. “No. I’m-- visiting. I live in London.”

The woman hummed. “Business trip?” she guessed playfully.

“Sort of,” Matt said, as he thought, _yeah, I can play_ , even though really he felt more like climbing under the floorboards and being peaceful for a while. “I’m a lawyer, actually.”

“A lawyer from London,” she said, tilting herself so that she faced Matt more fully. “I don’t think I’ve ever met one of those.”

The woman ordered her drink and they chatted some more, then he bought her a drink, and she bought him a drink. Matt wondered where her friends were, but then they came up and kissed her on the cheek and said goodnight, so then it was just the two of them. Cait, she was called. Cait lead Matt out to the smoking area, and only got halfway through a cigarette before she ground it out with the heel of her trainers before saying, “Where are you staying?”

“A hotel,” Matt said, getting some cash out of his wallet to check he had enough to pay for a cab. Cait downed the last of her drink. “It’s not too far from here.”

But when they got to his room, Matt was feeling-- off. Drunk and uncomfortable and prickling at the smell of cigarette smoke that clung to them. He didn’t stop the motions, though, didn’t stop Cait from loosening off his tie or toeing off her shoes or unbuckling his belt. Didn’t stop her, didn’t stop her, didn’t stop her. And when she saw his scars she asked, “What happened to you?”

_Why are you like this?_

“Car crash. They don’t hurt at all, don’t worry about it,” he rushed out before pushing back in to kiss her again.

Matt fumbled for the condom he kept in his wallet, and everything began to go exactly like all those times he’d slept around in uni except halfway through he  got an overwhelming urge to _bite_ , which he first thought was a weird desire to to bite _her_ , but it wasn’t that. He wanted to bite _himself_. He wanted pain and something raw and real; he wanted to punch some fucker who _deserved it_ and feel the ache in his knuckles. He wanted _blood_.

So he got some; he sunk his teeth in and tasted metal, the feeling wrongly warm, like an infection or a purge or lighter fire. It wasn’t the best sex he’d ever had - Matt’s mind was elsewhere but he at least tried to make it good for her because it was the fucking _least_ he could do - and when they were done, Cait gasped, horrified, when she saw the curved row of incisions along his forearm that were burgeoning with blood.

“Jesus Christ,” she muttered, gathering the duvet around her chest. Her heart was pounding in her chest. Matt knew he should’ve said _no_ , he should’ve stopped this when she first started talking to him, should’ve ignored her. “Jesus Christ. How hard do you have to bite yourself to draw _blood_?”

“Sorry,” Matt said emptily. He knew he was acting really fucking weird, but that didn’t raise alarm in his chest. The back of his mind was writhing in disgust and screaming at him - _why the fuck are you doing this?_ “I didn’t-- I didn’t realise I was biting that hard.”

Cait left shortly thereafter, and Matt was overcome with a guilt he hadn’t felt since the first few times he’d had sex. He felt sick by himself, felt sick with someone else.

_Maybe you’re just sick._

He growled uselessly at the thought, like his bare teeth would force it to cower back. But cowering back was still inside his head. Still inside his _fucking_ head.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The next afternoon, Matt dragged himself out of bed, corpse-like, just to make sure the sheets on his bed would be changed, and came back to sleep some more. Waking in the late evening again feeling more alert than he had during the day, he paced his room like a tiger pacing its cage at the zoo, as he tried to get himself to go shower, but ended up just downing some coffee and heading back out again when the walls of his room pressed in. This time, he ended up just walking to the quays, then followed the River Liffey back to the Liberties. He always seemed to end up back here.

He got a couple drinks from a different pub to the one the night before - did his Dad ever drink here? - and he was fairly convinced that somehow, all of the city surely knew he was a fuckup. On his empty stomach, the alcohol went straight to his head, and then--

A few buildings over, out the back of a different bar. A three guys whispering about a mugging; whispering about a target. A sign from God that he caught it, surely. _Get back in the game. Stop wallowing, you useless piece of shit, and get going._

Matt leapt up to his feet and _ran_ , enjoying the blood starting to pump through his body, the strain of his muscles, harsh air down his throat. He hadn’t worked out as much as he should’ve been, so this felt _great._ Before he got there, he chucked his cane into a bin and then realised that he didn’t have anything to cover his face with.

Fuck it. Someone needed his help.

Though he’d much rather have surprised them from above, he couldn’t sense a fire escape close enough, and given his broken wrist, he couldn’t just climb up the side of the building. So he ended up in the mouth of the alleyway as the three guys crowded a young couple into the wall deep between two buildings, a high brick wall cutting off the other exit. They were acting all friendly with knives twirling in their hands by their thighs.

“Stop playing with your food.”

They all turned to Matt. One of them, the closest, snorted. Matt probably didn’t look particularly threatening without the mask, but he was more than willing to make them scared. “Get the fuck out of here.”

Matt threw up an act of his own, holding out his hands placatingly and lowering his voice as he took the few shuffling steps forward. “Listen, lads, you don’t need to do this.”

They didn’t get a chance to respond, because Matt had the first one disarmed in seconds, and after dodging a few swipes, the second one was close to follow.

“Go!” Matt snarled at the two kids, frozen in place like prey. When they didn’t move an inch, Matt rounded on them. “ _Go!_ ”

Their heartbeats spiked. They finally broke out of their inertia and spirited away - so now it was just Matt and the three guys.

It was about then that Matt realised this might’ve been a terrible mistake.

Matt got a couple of good hits in, but blocking with his other arm made it throb in pain, and he could hear the fragile connection between the bones creak in protest of the onslaught.

One guy swung and--

Didn’t miss. Matt’s jaw exploded into pain and blood oozed out from under his teeth. He spat, brought himself up from his tilt, tried again to swing.

Miss.

Miss.

Miss.

The three guys seemed to simultaneously realise they were going to win, and suddenly the air became charged as the power changed hands. Matt’s head was swimming and it was knocked again, again, winded by a boot to his gut.

In the same way a falling knife had no handle, he dropped to his knees. One of them found a piece of piping, dragging tinny over the ground as he picked it up.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Matt knew he should be back up on his feet, coming up swinging, but--

He didn’t want to, and that was such a relief to know.

Matt was fairly certain he was going to hell, as sure as he was that he’d already fallen, because sometimes hell was being told your mother raised you but didn’t think to pass along the information, sitting on your cold and empty bed with a plaster cast on your wrist, kneeling on the ground in Dublin with your dad’s blood seeping up through your jeans, or kneeling on the ground in Dublin with your pulse racing in your ears and a metal pipe singing tantalisingly close to your head. And maybe his life wasn’t one great philharmonic symphony of punishment, but it still felt like whatever he did - however hard he tried to repent - the song played on, with no end in sight, the inherited sin Matthew Murdock never quite wiped clean.

Dimly, he wondered if they were going to knock him out, or maybe if they were going to kill him. Blood was spilling from his mouth, flecks drying tacky on his chin.

The piping, cold fingers wrapped around it. He hoped God would forgive him.

But--

“Hey!”

Oh, _shit._

“Hey! Stop that or I’ll-- call the police!”

It was _Foggy_ , voice trembling in terror and fear-sweat all over his body, but Foggy nonetheless.

Something of an argument ensued, and Matt wasn’t there. He could feel water seeping up through his jeans, could smell blood in the air, a smell of death that’d never been so comforting. His shoulder was being jostled, but it took him a moment to realise that Foggy was trying to get his attention. It didn’t feel real.

“... absolute dickheads,” Foggy was muttering.

It was though his mind had thrown up some imperceivable yet still present wall between him and the rest the word, and he felt his throat create sound, tongue form syllables.

“Wh--?”

“They took my wallet.”

“Why did you-- intervene?”

“You were about to be taken out execution style by a bit of piping, Matt, what--?”

Matt tried to push into his feet, but his thighs went weak. He was caught by Foggy as he overbalanced, skin of his palm scraping against the wet pavement. “You shouldn’t have...” Tears threatened to choke him; Foggy fucked it up, he _fucked it up,_ and Matt was furious and empty and spinning. He pushed Foggy away angrily. “Fuck off. How did you even find me?”

“Private detective tracked the GPS on your phone.” Foggy wasn’t perturbed. He clung on tighter, a real bear hug this time. “It’s okay,” he hushed.

Matt tried again weakly, and now he really could cry out of frustration. “It isn’t.”

“No, it isn’t,” Foggy sighed into Matt’s hair. “Let’s get you to a hospital.”

Everything felt out of focus, somehow, like hearing music from the next building across, where he was sure he could hear lyrics in the midst of a pounding bass, but entirely unable to form them into sentences. Foggy dumped him in a chair at A&E and Matt was sure that he shouldn’t, shouldn’t, _shouldn’t_ be here. A triage nurse came over and talked to him, and Matt didn’t want to answer her questions, but Foggy did for him. She left and quickly returned with an ice pack for his face.

Then they were alone again. Foggy swallowed loudly. “I wish you’d told me things were getting bad.”

“Things are fine.”

Foggy sighed irritably, and didn’t say anything again until he asked if Matt wanted a snack from the vending machine. It’d been over twenty-four hours since his last meal, so he asked, “Actually, could we go get something from the shop? A sandwich or something,” not because he was hungry, but because some part of him was sure somewhere in among it all he should eat.

“You should probably stay here in case they call your name. I’ll be right back.”

They didn’t call his name, and Foggy returned with a bland and uninspiring sandwich that suited Matt’s strange state well. He began eating enthusiastically, but then the taste in his mouth became loud, and the chewing boring, so lost his appetite halfway through and gave the rest to Foggy, who of course only finished it off because he didn’t know how long it’d been since Matt last ate. Between bites, Foggy was rapidly typing on his phone.

“Who are you texting?” Matt spoke up, a strange feeling that it wasn’t really _him_ asking it, but some version of himself who could be present and alert. The Matt who wouldn't have gotten himself so deeply into shit like this. “Karen?”

“Yes. Well, no, not right at this moment. I’m texting the P.I. an update.”

“P.I.,” Matt muttered, shaking his head disbelievingly. “What’s he called?”

“She’s called Jessica Jones,” Foggy corrected pointedly.

“As in the Jessica Jones who--?”

“Yup,” Foggy said nonchalantly. “She’s represented by Marci’s firm.”

Matt turned to Foggy, confused. “Since when does Marci have a firm? I thought she worked at the Crown Court.”

“Like, two months ago. She’s in-house.” Foggy sighed. “Jesus, pal. I told you that, at least twice. She’s at Hogarth, Benowitz & Chao as one of their barristers. You really have been out of it.”

Matt sat back, perturbed and irritated. “And what have you told Karen?”

“That you’re safe, and that you might be feeling a bit _delicate_ and won’t be in work for a few days once we’re back in the country.”

Matt knew the ‘delicate’ comment wasn’t supposed to be insulting. It was supposed to be a joke, because Foggy always joked at times like this, but Matt didn’t feel like letting it slide. “Don’t call me delicate.” Foggy stopped typing, his head turned up to Matt. “I don’t like it when people treat me like glass, you know that.”

Foggy nodded. “Sorry.”

Shortly after, the nurse called his name and he was ushered into a curtained off cubicle and told to take off his shirt. And so it began.

“I can’t,” he said tiredly.

“It’s okay,” the nurse replied. “I’ll help you.”

“No, Foggy, tell her - I can’t.”

“Matt, take your fucking shirt off,” Foggy snapped. Matt wasn’t sure where the sympathy had gone, but then again, it was bound to run out at some point. “You’re supposed to be a show-off, aren’t you? Jesus.”

“Mr Nelson--”

“Sorry. Christ, sorry, Matty-- I just--” Matt didn’t need supersenses to know Foggy was close to tears as well. They’d always cried fairly easily around one another, and he knew they both felt raw right now. “Can you just let her do her job?”

“Would you rather your friend left?”

That was directed at Matt. He struggled to wrangle his brain into gear, and a dull fear rose bile up his throat at the thought of being left alone while he was so defenceless. Logically, he knew Foggy neither could nor would deck a nurse, but that didn’t matter right now. “No. He’s okay.”

Matt undid a couple buttons then tried to raise his hands to tug his shirt over his head, but the nurse came and helped him immediately. He wanted to bat her away, but didn’t. He was so fucking tired. He wanted to just get this over with so he could leave.

The nurse breathed, “Oh, J--” so softly Matt only caught it because he was paying attention, but she cut herself off, the veneer of professionality shuttering back down. “Honey, what happened to you?”

“He was in a car crash as a kid,” Foggy said when Matt was silent for too long. “The scars are from that.”

Her fingers were ghosting over his skin, and Matt could practically hear the cogs turning, because some of his scarring would be too pink and fresh. It was then that the situation crashed down on him as a jolt of pain from the knife wound on his side skittered over his skin. He jerked away roughly as his heart felt swollen in it’s casing, and he sucked in a breath that left his tongue dry up against the roof of his mouth. All of a sudden, he could hear it all, smell it all, taste it all, and the barriers between him and the rest of the world fell to a flood.

There was blood on his tongue and the nurse was making a high groaning noise and clutching her nose. Foggy was yelling, and the feeling like he’d been hit in the head abruptly cleared.

“Fucking hell, Matt, what--”

Then a few more people came into the room, and Matt wasn’t sure how the fuck he got here, what dream state had lead him to this moment-- _why_ would he let himself be taken to the hospital?

Or maybe this wasn’t a hospital, or maybe he’d actually died on the ground out there, or maybe this wasn’t real anyway, or the journey wasn’t, or alleyway hadn’t been--

No. No, because Foggy’s hands were on his bare shoulders, and Matt was panting and his eyes were burning and he was tense the corner of the cubicle.

Things started making sense after that.

Matt had punched the nurse, obviously. He tried to make himself calm down, so that the people crowding around wouldn’t try to restrain him. The fear went inwards, and he pushed it down his head and neck and spine until it rested in his lungs and he could breathe it out.

It took them a while, but eventually, Matt was back on the bed again, promising not to lash out again. Foggy was asked to step out.

Foggy was hesitating, his aborted movement causing sound waves that made Matt have to contain a shudder. “Why?”

“No,” Matt said, and it was him this time, not some other creature who was piloting his body through the storm for him. “I want-- he should stay with me.”

“I just need to ask you some questions,” the new nurse said. “They might be personal. Is that okay?”

It wasn’t okay, none of it was okay, but Matt nodded his consent, and he ran through a humiliating batch of questions - luckily, Foggy essentially already knew all the answers to them. Was Matt in a relationship? Sexually active? Did his friends treat him well? Did any of them hurt him? Did he have a support network? As in, did he have people to go to when he needed help?

“Okay, last few, you’re doing so well.” It was condescending. Matt’s stomach writhed in irritation, and the nurse was clearly pretty convinced he was out of his head or something. He was asking Matt the _mental health_ sort of questions. “Have you ever had thoughts of self harm?”

“No.”

“Matty…” Foggy sighed.

“I haven’t,” Matt snapped back. “I’ve never hurt myself.” Asides from the bite marks on his forearm. They didn’t count; heat of the moment, and he wasn’t exactly picking apart razors for the blades. He’d told the nurse that a young family friend did it. He hadn’t believed him.

Foggy sounded at his wits’ end. “Letting other people hurt you is still self harm, Matt.”

This argument wasn’t going anywhere quickly, and he could sense the burning gaze of the nurse. Matt was gripped by a sudden fear that admitting anything at all would get him sectioned, and he couldn’t imagine anything worse than losing his freedom. “Well then,” he said, almost surprised at himself for being able to manage any kind of subtlety in this state of mind. “It’s a good thing that I _don’t let people hurt me_.”

Foggy got the hint and shut up, and let the nurse carry on her assessment.

 

 

* * *

 

 

By the time the assessment had ended and he’d gotten treatment for the broken nose, black eye, and re-fractured wrist, Matt was discharged with an order to contact his GP for checkups, and the sun was coming up. Dublin wasn’t so different to London in how it awoke; commuters, bikes, busses, trains. Sharp warmth; cloudless morning.

Matt hated it. The cooing of the pigeons fucked him off, and the rats squeaked like electric shocks. Vibrations, ones he’d usually appreciate, came from the wrong fucking place. Dublin’s trains were above the ground, which was totally fucking-- _incorrect_. Some of streets Foggy took them down to get back to his hotel were cobbled (Matt’d refused to get a cab - he thought he might throw up if he had to sit in a car) and he had the wrong tip on his cane for it, so every so often it’d get momentarily jammed between two stones. And everything smelt a lot, felt a lot, was a lot fucking louder than usual, and Matt--

He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to go home, but he didn’t want to go back to his empty loft flat, and he didn’t want to go back to London. Not yet.

“Stop using the cane and let me guide you,” Foggy said. He was trying not to sound irritated. Matt knew he must be inconvenienced by all of this, but to be fair, Matt hadn’t _asked_ him to come to Ireland.

“I’m fine.”

“Mate, I’m two fucking seconds from wrangling that thing off you, and do you want me to be known as the cunt who steals canes from blind guys?”

Matt didn’t want to smile, because he was in a terrible, _terrible_ mood, but couldn’t help it. “Fine.” He held the cane out to Foggy, and then with his now free hand, grabbed onto his elbow.

He wouldn’t admit it, but it was easier going after that.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Matt collapsed into bed the moment they got in, and when he awoke, it was to Foggy munching down on greasy fish and chips.

Matt groaned and shifted, wincing at his sore body. “Where did you get that?”

“Round the corner. Surprised you didn’t wake up earlier.”

“How long have I been out?”

Foggy unlocked his phone. “About five hours. It’s eleven. I got you some.”

So they sat opposite each other on Matt’s bed, eating their lukewarm takeaway food, and it reminded him of all the times in uni they did this exact thing, maybe with vodka cokes, maybe with the Killers’ _Hot Fuss_ on in the background. But this wasn’t uni and Matt had a broken nose and a broken wrist and Foggy wasn’t the long haired punk he used to be.

Somehow, right under Matt’s nose, everything had changed, while remaining exactly the same.

“I think we should talk about options,” Foggy eventually said.

“Options?”

“About you,” he carried on, pushing his hair out of his eyes with the heel of his hand, to avoid getting chip grease in it. “You’re pretty clearly not okay.”

“I’ll be in work-- when’s your return flight?”

“I didn’t book one. You?”

“Same.”

Foggy waved a hand distractedly, a familiar Foggyism. “This isn’t about you being in work, anyway. This is about you and-- you.” He took a deep breath and said, “I feel like you’ve gotten it into your head that I only care about you because I care about the firm.”

Matt was in two minds. One part shrugged: _Yeah, obviously, because it’s true_. The other screamed at him that _Foggy is your best friend - why would he stop caring about you?_

Foggy carried on. “You’ve been distracted and distant for months now, even before Lantom and the--” He tapped his opposite wrist, the one Matt had broken. “And this is exactly what it was like in uni, except now you’re holding the reins to _really_ fuck up your life. And I can’t just sit by and let you.”

“I’m not going to stop being Daredevil.”

“This isn’t-- it isn’t about Daredevil.”

“If it’s not about Daredevil, and it’s not about work, then what the hell is it about?”

“ _You_ , Matt,” Foggy exclaimed. “Have you forgotten that _you_ matter in all of this?”

Matt didn’t want to talk about it; he didn’t want to talk about how he was a fuck up, how he was sure no one would really notice if _he_ died, how some nights he went out for a fight hoping to get the shit kicked out of him because he _deserved it_. He deserved it for being a shitty friend, for being a shitty coworker, a mediocre lawyer and an even worse human being. He deserved it, he deserved it, he deserved it, and nothing Foggy or Karen or a fucking therapist could say would change that because words couldn’t change facts.

He didn’t even want to fucking _think_ about it. And it wasn’t that he wanted to kill himself. He wasn’t about to overdose or something - he wasn’t brave enough to do that - and his life had meaning via Daredevil, but if he couldn’t be Daredevil, and he didn’t _want_ to die, but--

It just... wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

Matt stood up stiffly. “I don’t matter, Foggy. No one matters.”

“Of course you do,” Foggy said dismissively, and it was then that Matt realised how vastly different the directions they were coming at this issue were. Foggy was taking it as given fact, but Matt knew the truth. Foggy seemed to catch something in his face, because he carried on, “You matter to me.”

He was so sincere it hurt, and Matt didn’t have the heart to tell him _that_ didn’t really matter, either.

“I’m going out,” Matt said.

“No, you’re not. We’re not done talking.”

“What else is there to talk about?” Matt threw his hands up in frustration at Foggy’s massive overreaction. “I’m done with this.”

“Well, I’m not,” Foggy cried, jumping up from where he’d been sitting, and crowding up into Matt’s space. “What will it take for you to admit that there’s something wrong?”

“Fine! I’m not okay! Can I leave now?”

“Try again, like you mean it,” Foggy said.

Matt could feel his gaze, and it was deeply uncomfortable. He started to form the words, but nothing came out. It was jammed in his throat, like the words themselves knew that to be spoken sincerely would be to lie.

“C’mon,” Foggy said, his warm hand coming to rest on Matt’s forearm. “I promise, I won’t leave, I won’t be angry. I love you, and there isn’t an asterisk or terms and conditions on that. It’s just _true_.”

Whatever shaky, internal scaffolding had been keeping the shitshow together abruptly collapsed, and Matt hated himself, but the grief that’d been crawling in his guts let itself be known. He cried, quietly at first, but then Foggy engulfed him in a hug, and it felt like the first real thing he’d experienced in months. The dark thing inside of him was furious and Matt _hated the dark thing_ with such a passion it made his hands ball into fists full of Foggy’s t-shirt and choke on a grunt.

“It’s okay,” Foggy whispered. “I got you.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

The next morning, they visited Jack’s grave.

Denny had given him the name of the cemetery, but he didn’t know the exact row and plot number. “I tend to just know where it is,” he’d said apologetically at the end of the dinner. He’d then offered to take Matt there, but Matt hadn’t been sure how much more company he could stand.

Matt and Foggy went to the reception at Glasnevin, a sprawling but cramped graveyard, the largest in Dublin. The man there found the burial record and pointed them in the right direction, and they began a trudge to the back corner of the graveyard. Matt’d always found cemeteries a little weird, given that if he concentrated, he could generally smell corpses and rotting, but he’d been informed by Foggy that was completely unique to him and that was why normal people didn’t avoid them.

Eventually, Foggy said, “I think I see it.” They cut through a row and then Foggy stopped them. “It’s in front of you.”

The headstone was small and unassuming, with a curved top. Matt crouched, gently placing the flowers he’d brought, and with a shaking hand, ran his fingers over the sun-warm, weathered headstone. He’d never gotten the chance to feel the headstone, because it hadn’t been placed there until after the fresh earth had settled.

 

_IN LOVING MEMORY OF JONATHAN “BATTLIN’ JACK” MURDOCK_

_FATHER, FIGHTER, FRIEND_

_1971 - 2001_

 

Matt tried to imagine himself, aged twenty or twenty-one, uprooting himself from a warzone London for a city in another country, one that wouldn’t be welcoming. He tried to imagine it with a baby on his back, with the memory of his mother’s death fresh in his mind.

He couldn’t. It seemed like an impossibly huge task, and the past few weeks Matt hadn’t even managed to shave.

The grass was dry when he lowered himself down, cross-legged, to the ground, collapsing his cane and leaving it next to him. He blessed himself with the sign of the cross, then prayed for a while. The heat of the sun prickled at his back, and passersby were quiet background chatter to his thoughts. He asked for Michael to look after Jack and God to look after Lantom. He wished peace on his grandmother. He asked for guidance, and this time the answer came to him abruptly.

He rose and brushed off his jeans, then took a half-step back so he was level to Foggy.

“I think I need to-- talk to someone,” Matt mumbled. He found his voice under all the embarrassment, carried on quietly. “I have all this shit that’s been rattling around my head since I was a kid and I-- I’m sick of it. I don’t know what to do with it anymore.”

Foggy just nodded, his hair caught on a breeze for a moment as he put his hand on Matt’s shoulder. The smell and space of him was comforting in all of this, a home away from home, something so familiar he was more used to tuning it out. Now Matt focused - a thrumming heartbeat from head to toe, the smells of the hotel and breakfast and a too-expensive cologne. Aspirational, was Foggy. “First of all, I’m proud of you for saying that.” He tilted himself slightly toward Matt and though his nod of agreement was small, it felt utterly monumental. “And… I think you might be right.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Matt picked up the electric razor and slid the button to the ON position, and began to run it over his cheeks.

Hair floated down into the sink leaving raw skin behind; he hadn’t realised quite how long his beard had gotten until he felt the strands parted from him. The razor yanked on a couple long hairs as he went by, but no worries. Then the more difficult part of his neck, where the grain parted below his Adam’s apple, which he did early on before the razor got too hot or his skin would get even more irritated. He tested the length of his sideburns with a brush of the finger upwards, and shaved those down, too, feeling with his thumbs if they were even. Then his moustache and jaw and chin. Setting the razor on the side turning on the taps, he rinsed his face off with shockingly cold water, which made his eyes blink wide open clearer than they’d felt in a while.

Matt hunched over the sink and just let the water drip off his face for a while, feeling alert as each droplet made its slow, prickly way down his cool skin. He imagined each drop that rolled off his jaw to be a line right back down to Earth, tethering him.

Then, he ran a wet hand over the rim of the sink, helping his snakeskin down the drain, grabbed another towel, and patted his face dry with it. Foggy had brought moisturiser, which was great, because Matt had forgotten his, and he tended to get a rash if he didn’t use one, despite the fact he didn’t go for a close shave for precisely that reason. He rubbed some into his face, feeling over the contours of his jaw and neck and cheeks and nose and brow.

Slowly, Matt’s motions became less about the task at hand, and more about feeling his face, taking stock of the swell on his curved nose, peaked by a scab. The scars around his eyes, crow’s feet, a tiny pock of a scar on his forehead, wrinkles if he raised his eyebrows. Bruises over his cheek. The slope between his bottom lip and his chin, and the straight line of his jaw, round on the corner up to his ear. Matt ran a finger around his earlobe, then followed up to the shell until it met back around with soft hair. Back down to his neck via his sideburns; the slight jut of his Adam’s apple, then to where the throat disappeared under collarbones. He followed the line down with his thumb flat over his skin, down his breastbone, where the curve of his ribs gave way to his stomach.

Matt dropped his hand. Suddenly, he wondered what Maggie looked like. Did he take more after her, or his Dad?

He wondered what his Dad would’ve looked like, if he was still alive. Would Matt look more like him, as he felt his own signs of aging on his skin? Would people be able to tell they were family? Matt hoped so.

Two abrupt raps on the door that made Matt jolt. Foggy’s voice through the bathroom door, obviously. “Matt, sorry, mate, but are you alright in there? You’re being… suspiciously quiet. Haven’t drowned in the tub?”

“I’m alright,” Matt confirmed, throwing it over his shoulder.

It didn’t feel completely like a lie, either, and though he knew that really he wasn’t okay, the clean feeling of his face and body let him think that maybe he _would_ be. That maybe one day Foggy could ask him that and Matt wouldn’t have to feel guilty for his response, but for today--

It wasn’t _not_ the truth.

And for today, that was close enough.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWs: Suicidality, disassociative states, hospitals.
> 
> So we only have the epilogue left now! That should be out in the next couple weeks.
> 
> I've also been working on a playlist for this fic, which you can find [on Spotify here](https://open.spotify.com/user/g58l9hq5fjl3a1xly5qz6ew27/playlist/32I7bILSlnyjWPwWTkiR5S?si=oNQ7_1KsRoyZHQZOiQEgLw). Had a lot of fun with this one - it's 21 entirely British/Irish artists, asides from one bonus track of "When You Were Young" by the Killers, because I was surprised to learn they weren't actually English. Apparently we over here just... really fucking love Mr. Brightside. I listened to this playlist so much over the past few months when writing and thinking about this fic. It's not 100% finished yet but I probably won't be adding too many more songs to it at this point, so - enjoy!


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